LincAlerts notification system active

Lincoln Parish residents can now sign up online for the LincAlerts public safety notification system.

The free, parishwide system is a one-stop location for weather and other notifications for all parish residents. The new system, which went live last week, will push out mass notifications for all the parish or ones specific to an individual municipality, Lincoln Parish Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Kip Franklin said Friday Alerts are received via text, phone, or email.

“We’re going to be able to use it for emergency messaging. We’re going to able to use it for internal messaging. It’s just going to be a real good system,” he said.

LincAlerts replaces Alert FM. Alert FM was being paid for through the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, but GOHSEP cancelled the contract.

“So, we had to start looking for something else,” Franklin said.

LincAlerts is powered by Rave Mobile, the same system Louisiana Tech University uses for its emergency notifications.

Sign- up for LincAlerts is through the Lincoln Parish website, lincolnparish. org. Under the “Your Government” dropdown, select “LincAlerts” and follow the prompts.

Users may select which alerts they want to receive.

For now, the only options for topic-specific local notifications are parish alerts and information. Topics specific to Ruston, Simsboro, Grambling, Dubach, and Choudrant will be added later.

The city of Ruston, which now uses the CodeRED system, will switch to LincAlerts in January. But city residents can sign up for and begin receiving messages from LincAlerts now.

“This really offers some great new features CodeRED did not,” Dusty Hampton, Ruston’s IT/ telecom director, said.

For example, more than one address can be entered, allowing users to get alerts for where they leave, and where they work, so long as both addresses are in Lincoln Parish.

Users can sign into their account to update the type of notifications they receive.

Although Grambling has recently bought into the CivicReady alert system, residents can also sign up for LincAlerts.