Officials launch new alert system in Sunbury

SUNBURY, NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — One area city has a new quick way of alerting its residents about what’s happening in their neighborhoods.

People in Sunbury now have a new quick response notification system at their fingertips to hear from the city about emergencies, like flooding or crime, street closures, and even events happening in the city.

“We can notify the entire public we can break it down and notify parts of the city. We can notify them in seconds,” said Sunbury City Clerk Jeff Wojciechowski.

The City of Sunbury now has a new way of getting important news out to the community.

Residents can receive updates directly from the city on their cell phones.

“We wanna notify people of when things are bad, we wanna notify them when things are good,” said Wojciechowski.

The system is currently active for people to sign up, however, no notifications have been sent out.

Because it’s still in the testing stage, Wojciechowski says once that’s complete, residents will begin to receive alerts.

“We’ve trained on it. We’ve done probably about 80 hours of training together to get it ready,” Wojciechowski stated.

People can even adjust the settings to specify the kind of notifications they want to receive.

“If you don’t want me to tell you when there’s yard sales in town, you won’t know that you can pick and choose what you want to be notified,” Wojciechowski explained.

The project has been in the works for about a year and a half, but Wojciechowski says recent criminal activity has sped up the process of getting the system up and running.

In July of this year, bomb threats were made to a city volunteer fire company.

In August, a fatal shooting took place in the area of the county courthouse, located in the heart of the city.

One resident says the system is a step in the right direction for Sunbury.

“You know we get information, a lot of times we get it second and third hand, stories askew, we don’t really know the real story but with the alert system it gives us the opportunity to like in real time find out what’s going on around the city and the surrounding areas,” said Sunbury resident Mark Paul.

Signing up for the app takes less than five minutes.

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