Lahar? Bad wreck? Fire? Here’s a new way you can find out about Puyallup emergencies
There’s a new way Puyallup residents can stay informed during emergencies.
The city recently launched “Puyallup Alerts,” an emergency alert system used to communicate with residents. It will notify locals of emergencies through texts, phone calls and email notifications. It can also send messages via reverse 911 (recorded emergency messages that police and fire agencies can use to reach residents by phone).
People can sign up through the city’s website at cityofpuyallup.org/2058/Puyallup-Alerts. They must live within city limits or work in the city to be eligible to receive alerts.
“This new alert system is intended to localize how we communicate to our residents. Whether it’s a major street closure, weather alert, or a lahar, this system will deliver critical safety information to our residents quickly,” city emergency manager Kirstin Hofmann said in a news release.
Aside from public emergencies, the alert system can also be used for “specific non-emergency situations,” Police Chief Scott Engle said in the news release. This includes things such as missing persons and major vehicle accidents.
City spokesperson Eric Johnson said being at risk of a lahar from Mount Rainier prompted the city to establish this alert system. The fire that occurred at a cold storage facility in August 2021 was also a factor, he said.
“There’s a lot of lessons that were learned from that event,” Johnson said. “One of the lessons that we learned is that we really need to have our own dedicated emergency alert system.”
He said via email that they learned it’s important that city officials “have our own system that we can have full access to during an emergency.”
The alert system is separate from Pierce County ALERT. The city encourages residents to enroll in both. Johnson said Puyallup Alerts will benefit residents because it is more localized.
The Pierce County ALERT system makes sense for a countywide emergency, Johnson said, but doesn’t make sense for something that’s only affecting Puyallup.
“For instance, if we have a major vehicle collision downtown that requires our police officers to reroute traffic, then we need to get a targeted message out quickly to residents in that immediate area,” he said via email. “Having our own system, that we can control, allows us to send these targeted messages out quickly and effectively.”
The alert system will cost the city $6,694 per year, Johnson wrote in an email.
This story was originally published April 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
