In an effort to better alert residents and keep people safe, the Swift911 emergency notification system seeks to better alert those in Berlin Borough
Berlin Borough officials would like to remind residents who are not using Swift911 to sign up to receive alerts regarding important information. The borough started using the app in 2015 and is one of the more active communities in using the app in Camden County, according to Chief of Police Michael Miller.
The free app allows borough officials to notify residents with alerts of important information, and can narrow alerts to specific streets to ensure alerts only go to affected persons in the community. Alerts can be sent via email or text, depending on the residents’ preference.
Prior to Swift911, Berlin Borough used Nixle, however complaints from the community urged borough officials to make the change to Swift911 with Camden County.
Councilman Jim Pearce says, previously, residents would receive alerts about “every little thing,” but now with Swift911, alerts can be tailored so the whole community isn’t alerted about something that might not affect them. However, obviously, communitywide problems will still be sent to all residents.
“With Nixle, you couldn’t tailor it as much. We would get messages about, say, a lost dog in another town. People were getting alerts about that, and to me, it scared me because I don’t want to be getting alerts on every little thing every day because if there is a real emergency, people are already complacent with it,” Pearce said. “That was a big complaint from residents.”
Miller sends alerts to the community when he is notified of potentially “emergency alert” worthy information, such as weather and traffic alerts, prolonged outages, hazardous materials leaks, missing person searches, special community notifications and more.
“I’m always here, I’m always being updated by my staff [no matter where I am],” Miller said. “After I’m notified of a problem, I put it out on Swift911.”
Miller said the service has 3,232 users, which includes individual residents and businesses.
A final aspect of the service it has the ability to notify non-residents traveling through Berlin Borough about problems when in the borough, if they are signed up for Swift911 in another town.
Residents can sign up for Swift911 by going to www.berlinnj.org, by searching for Swift911 in the app store or by texting “Swift911” to 995–38 to receive a download link.
Required information for residents includes first and last name, their address, cell and home phone numbers, email address and secondary phone numbers can also be added. Residents can remove their information after having signed up at anytime.
Borough officials stress the importance for residents to sign up for the free app to better keep the community aware of potential dangerous or hazardous activity in the future.
“The biggest thing is that residents need to sign up for this,” Miller said.
