Gilmer County Government
Ellijay, Georgia

2023 Gilmer County Budget Advertisement

New State-of-the-Art Emergency Alert System

Gilmer County has chosen Hyper-Reach, as our new state-of-the-art emergency alert system. Hyper-Reach will provide rapid notification of hazardous and urgent situations using a mix of telephone calls, text and email messages, smart speaker alerts and other advanced alerting methods. The system sends thousands of these messages to geographically targeted households in seconds, as well as sending broadcast messages to most current mobile telephones in an affected area using FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system.

“Our job is to protect the citizens of Gilmer County as effectively and cost-effectively
as possible.” said Keith Kucera, Public Safety Director for Gilmer County. “We reviewed all the major vendors for emergency notification service, and Hyper-Reach gave us everything we needed, as well as features only they had, at an unbelievable price. We’re really excited about this new capability.”

Citizens also can get emergency alerts via their Alexa-enabled smart speakers just by saying “Alexa, enable Hyper-Reach” and following the Alexa-provided instructions. With more than 50 million US households using Alexa devices, there are obviously thousands of County residents with Alexa units.

Citizens can also download the Hyper-Reach Anywhere app on their smartphone. Hyper-Reach Anywhere is a free smartphone app that allows individual citizens to manage and monitor the alerts they receive, both for their home and office addresses and for other addresses they care about such as those of elderly relatives or friends.
“We’re honored to have been selected by Gilmer County, GA to provide its emergency alerts,” said Sam Asher, President of Hyper-Reach. “It’s gratifying to be part of an effort to save lives and protect property and we take that responsibility very seriously.”

Residents and people who work in Gilmer County are encouraged to enroll now either by calling or texting “Alert” to (706)525-5733 or by going to the website http://hyper- reach.com/gagilmersignup.html.