Special to Iredell Free News 

Iredell County provides community information and emergency alert services through a company called Hyper-Reach. When important things are happening in the community, county officials use Hyper Reach to quickly get the word out by phone, text, email and other methods to you and your neighbors.

This free service will be a primary way that the County sends out information such as evacuation orders, shelter information and ways to get assistance.

For the system to work, the County needs residents to register their address and contact information so the system knows who to send the information to and how to send it.

Iredell County Emergency Communications will promote the importance of signing up for alerts for the next month.

You can enroll or update your information by calling or texting “Alert” to (980)-829-0101 or by visiting http://bit.ly/IredellCountyAlerts.

After you sign up or update your information, encourage your friends, family and neighbors in the community to also register or update their info.

You can also get community and emergency alerts through Alexa-enabled devices just by saying “Alexa, enable Hyper-Reach” and then following the Alexa-provided instructions. And you can also get alerts on your web browser by clicking “Accept” when you see the request for push notifications.

There’s also the Hyper-Reach Anywhere app you can download to your smartphone.

Hyper-Reach Anywhere is free and lets you manage and monitor the alerts you receive for home, office and other addresses you care about — such as elderly relatives. Go to your Apple or Google app store and search for “Hyper-Reach Anywhere.”

“We’re proud to be able to offer such an important service to the citizens of Iredell County,” said Stephen Smith, a 911 technical support specialist for Iredell Emergency Communications. “Hyper-Reach is state of the art, with the ability to reach every registered resident in the County in less than an hour.”