Bernalillo County urges residents to sign up for emergency alerts

Bernalillo County is asking more residents to sign up for its emergency alert system as fire activity and other hazards keep putting parts of Albuquerque and the county on short notice. The no-cost Everbridge program can send warnings to landlines, mobile phones and email addresses, giving households a faster line to urgent information than social media or word of mouth.

The county says alerts can cover severe weather, fire danger, hazardous conditions, road closures and other emergencies. Residents with mobile phones already receive emergency text alerts through the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or IPAWS, without signing up, but Everbridge is meant to widen the reach for people who want landline calls, customized local notices or both. Those without mobile phones are encouraged to register for calls to a landline, and anyone who previously used Nixle should continue receiving alerts because contact information was imported into Everbridge.

Officials say the system is most useful when danger is moving quickly across neighborhoods that do not all face the same risk at the same time. Bernalillo County has pointed to the East Mountains as a potential impact area for public safety power shutoffs because of wildfire risk, and county emergency managers also watch the Foothills of Albuquerque, the North Valley, the South Valley and unincorporated areas where a fire or evacuation notice can arrive differently from one community to the next. Residents can customize Everbridge alerts by ZIP code and agency and add home or work locations so the messages match where they actually spend the day.

The warning signs have been hard to miss. On May 27, county commissioners voted 4-0 to ban all open burning in unincorporated areas outside Albuquerque city limits after Fire & Rescue Chief Zach Lardy said fire activity had risen sharply in March and had not fully settled down by late May. Commissioner Eric Olivas said one small spark could be devastating in the East Mountains and the Foothills of Albuquerque. On May 23, officials issued a smoke health alert while more than 50 firefighters battled a 2-acre recycling-yard fire in the South Valley near Broadway Boulevard SE and Rio Bravo Boulevard SE.

Thomas Walmsley, the county’s emergency management director, has said wildfire season is becoming more unpredictable. The county’s emergency-management page also pushes the Ready, Set, Go system, underscoring a basic point for Bernalillo County residents: the next warning may be about smoke, wind, a road closure or a fast-moving fire, and the people who are signed up are the ones most likely to get it first.