WAOW - Newsline 9, Wausau News, Weather, SportsFree service provides emergency alerts to Wood County
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by Meg Bonacorsi
WOOD COUNTY (WAOW) -- When an emergency happens in your community, chances are you want to know about it.
Let's say a child goes missing, or this hospital is in desperate need of blood donations, people who sign up for a program called nixle will be the first to know about it.
Sergeant Brian Krzykowski with the Wisconsin Rapids Police Department says, "Our goal was to connect with our community on a technological level that we didn't currently have."
Agency and school leaders can send alerts from their computers or even phones, and then people who sign up to receive them can get a text, or email, or both.
Wisconsin Rapids Schools' director of technology, Bryon Kolbeck says, "I like the ability to mass communicate quickly and I think today it's a neat technology in that it sends the information to people. People don't have to come and get it."
When people sign up for nixle, they can specifically choose which schools and agencies they want to get alerts from.
Sgt.. Krzykowski says, "We want them to view it as something that when they do receive an alert, they need to pay attention and read more information about it either on their email or the web site."
Even though the service is free for the county and the community, leaders want people to know it is legitimate.
Wood County dispatch manager Kelly Zenz says, "You don't get advertising, you don't get spam. You know, it's just going to be our alerts that come to you and those are going to be few and far between that we need to send to you to give you that information that you really need to be safe."
So far, over a dozen schools and agencies have signed up to use the service. And Wood County leaders are encouraging community members to sign up so they can start getting those alerts.
To do that visit www.nixle.com
Online Reporter: Meg Bonacorsi
