Edgar County gets new alert system

EDGAR COUNTY, Ill. (WTHI) - An Illinois county finally received a working system to keep residents safe in emergencies.

Edgar County has had years of struggle with siren systems failing in past emergencies. The county switched to a text based alert system they felt was more reliable.

Fourteen outdoor sirens were replaced with a system that notifies lan line phones, pagers and cell phones in the case of a local emergencies.

"It's basically up and running mode, we just haven't gone into major test mode, because we would like to have more people get their cell phones registered," Duane Fidler with Emergency Service and Disaster Aid said.

Cell phones need to be registered with Edgar County to receive the alerts.