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BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP — Bloomfield Township residents have a new way to stay informed in the event of an emergency.
Bloomfield Alert, the township’s new emergency notification system, launched March 11, allowing public safety professionals to send alerts to the community via phone, text message, email and more.
“We’ll be able to send out crucial, time-sensitive information on emergencies that are not only going to keep the community informed, but it’s also going to give them information on how to stay safe and what to do and be prepared for events that are happening in our community,” said Officer Nick Soley of the Bloomfield Township Police Department.
The notification system can reach thousands of people in minutes to quickly share information in emergencies — like boil water notices, gas leaks, evacuation notices, police activity, fires, missing persons and more.
“We will be using this only for major emergencies or where somebody needs to take direction or take action — such as shelter in place, evacuate, don’t drink the water — like for a boil water alert, a natural gas leak in the area or a chemical spill that affects the people. We’re not going to be using it for a traffic accident on Telegraph telling people to avoid the area. We want it to be more of a major emergency, where people would need to take action,” said Bloomfield Township Fire Department Operations Officer Frank Cardinale.
Bloomfield Alert is the township’s version of the Oakland County emergency notification system, OakAlert, and Soley said it’s powered by the same company, OnSolve.
“It definitely doesn’t take the place of OakAlerts, because those are Oakland County emergencies that can be throughout the entire county, but ours are going to be more specific to Bloomfield Township, and they will definitely be emergencies only,” Soley said.
Officials will send messages to alert residents of emergency details, and instructions or precautions they need in order to make well-informed decisions and remain safe.
Registration for the voluntary community alert system is free for residents and can be completed by texting “BTALERTS” to 24639 or visiting https://accountportal.onsolve.net/bloomfieldtwp.
“The only thing that seems to be a little tricky is when you go to register on your phone, the first thing you’re going to see on your screen is username and password, but you actually have to scroll down below that to register.”
Those who register will be required to enter their residential or commercial address, which will be used when officials need to target specific parts of the community with an exact area of impact, so that only those people who are affected by an emergency situation are notified.
“I think one of the most common questions about this that I have gotten so far is why do I need to put my address in? We actually don’t care if you’re a Bloomfield Township resident. The reason we ask for an address is because we can geotraffic those alerts to make sure they are reaching the exact part of the community that they need to,” Soley said.
The BloomfieldAlert program costs the township $6,250 annually, although it is provided by the township to residents free of charge.
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