Text alert system to be launched in Lansing

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Although the city of Lansing has announced plans to unveil a system that will alert residents of emergencies, road closings, sports cancellations and more, city officials said no similar system currently is planned for East Lansing.

But East Lansing police Chief Tom Wibert said in an e-mail to The State News that Lansing’s system, which is slated to go live Dec. 14, could be a useful tool for the future.

“It would make sense to eventually implement a county-wide system, so that each jurisdiction can be served by a single system through a consolidated dispatch center,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Provided by a server called Nixel, subscription to Lansing’s text message alert system is free to the public, said Trent Atkins, Lansing’s emergency management chief.

Atkins said subscribers can choose which city departments they receive messages from, allowing each subscriber to decide whether to be notified of accidents, community events or severe weather.

“This will allow them to receive information that might be critical to their day, whether they’re driving down the road or taking the kids to school,” he said.

The system could be instrumental in investigations, Atkins said. It could allow police to send out messages warning the public to look for a suspect and also could send an e-mail with a photograph of the suspect, he said.

Emergency text alert systems utilized by MSU have been “very effective” in allowing police to reach about 70,000 people within minutes, MSU police inspector Bill Wardwell said. In the three years the systems have been available at MSU, police have been able to “get the word out” quickly during severe weather or in incidents such as an increase in laptop thefts, he said.

Police previously relied on tornado sirens and pagers that reached out to about 200 people, Wardwell said.

“Obviously, (we benefit) by being able to get the word out to large populations,” he said. “We understand we won’t be able to get everybody, but our goal is to get enough people that they’ll let others know.”

Although such a system currently is not available in East Lansing, Atkins said the service is growing slowly throughout the United States.

“It’s a really fantastic service,” he said. “I think we’re going to see more and more communities start using it.”

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