Stay Connected with Emergency Notifications

For the past few weeks, Elk Grove Village has been taking advantage of summer events to encourage residents to sign up for emergency notifications. At the Play, Picnic & Party event on July 17, representatives of the Village and the Northwest Central Joint Emergency Management System (JEMS), spoke to hundreds of residents about the importance of signing up to receive emergency alerts in Elk Grove Village and surrounding communities.

The regional Citizen-Alert program is a mass notification system, which enables communities to provide residents with critical information quickly in a variety of situations, such as severe weather occurrences, critical road closures, missing persons, and the potential evacuation of buildings or neighborhoods. Citizen-Alert has access to registered landline phone numbers, which can be used to alert residents of based on geographical area. However, an increasing number of residents no longer use landlines.

Residents without landlines, or those who simply want to stay connected while not at home, can register online to receive time-sensitive and location-specific messages on devices of their choosing, including home phone, cell phone, text messages, business phone, email, hearing impaired receiving devices, and more.

To sign up, residents provide contact information and choose the locations that matter to them, such as home, work, or school addresses. These locations can be in any of the communities that share the regional Citizen-Alert program, including Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, Inverness, Mount Prospect, Palatine, Prospect Heights, Rolling Meadows, Schaumburg and Streamwood.

When a potential safety hazard or concern occurs, a message will be sent via voice or text communication, based on how residents choose to receive information. Elk Grove Village residents can register for Citizen-Alert by visiting the Village website at www.elkgrove.org/stayconnected.