Sandoval County launches SCAN mass alert system for emergencies

Sandoval County’s new SCAN system is now sending emergency alerts by text message, phone call and email, giving people in Rio Rancho, Bernalillo, Corrales, Placitas and elsewhere another way to hear about fires, road closures, severe weather and other public-safety disruptions. County officials said the system took effect April 11 and is meant to push urgent information quickly across multiple platforms so residents, workers and visitors can get warnings as soon as possible.

SCAN stands for Sandoval County Alerts and Notifications. The county said the rollout is meant to reach not only permanent residents but also county employees and visitors moving through a sprawling jurisdiction where wildfire danger, flooding, road problems and weather-related outages can unfold far from the county seat. For daily life, that means a driver heading through Corrales could learn about a closure sooner, while someone traveling in or out of Rio Rancho or Bernalillo could get faster notice about a hazard affecting their route.

County Manager Wayne Johnson said the goal is to communicate quickly and across multiple platforms. The county’s emergency-management office, which is part of Sandoval County Fire and Rescue, supervises and activates the Emergency Operations Center during significant incidents. The EOC is where county leadership gathers to coordinate resources and decide priorities during natural disasters, human-caused disasters and terrorism-related events.

People can sign up for SCAN by texting 888777 with the keyword SANDOVALNM or by enrolling through the Everbridge portal provided by the county. That makes the system an opt-in alert channel built for fast notification when emergencies hit, especially in a county where distance and rapid growth can make broad warnings harder to deliver effectively.

The launch also marks a shift in Sandoval County’s alerting infrastructure after more than 10 years of using CodeRED for emergency notifications with the City of Rio Rancho. Rio Rancho said that system had been used for public notifications during emergencies such as water outages and fires. SCAN now gives Sandoval County its own newer platform as emergency communications become a more visible part of county operations.

The timing matters after a nationwide CodeRED cyberattack in late 2025 disrupted emergency notification systems used by governments across the United States. Sandoval County also opened its Public Safety Emergency Communications Center in July 2025, a 24/7 operation with a 26-member dispatch team that officials described as the first large-scale dispatch center built in New Mexico in more than 20 years. Together, the new dispatch center and SCAN give the county more ways to warn people fast when the next emergency reaches the road, the river or the neighborhood.