Mayor Bloomberg Announces PLAN, a New Emergency Text Alert System

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, FEMA and other federal agencies have jumped head-first into the text messaging playing field yesterday with the announcement of the new Personal Localized Alerting Network, or PLAN system.

PLAN will enable the City to send out an emergency text message of 90 characters or less to cell phones whenever there is an serious threat to residents and a need for immediate response, such as a tornado or blizzard warning, a terrorist attack or a general call-to-action.

"If people need to take action, the system can transmit instructions clearly, accurately, and in a timely manner, which is something that could save countless lives," said the mayor.

This first-ever national cell phone alert system is an effort to keep up with new technology-- is a modernization of the earlier Emergency Broadcast System (1963-1997) designed to keep Americans safer. 

PLAN will enable government officials to send emergency alerts to specific geographic areas, pushing through the information to PLAN-enabled mobile devices immediately, overriding any other message that might be in transit, and circumventing any blockage or downtime.

The system is not a mobile app and there are no downloads. You won't even have to sign up to get the free alerts, but a special chip is required to allow your phone to receive them. Some smartphones already have the chip, and starting next year, all new phones will have it.

There’s no question that the new technology has been developed in response to the elevated number of emergencies New York City has experienced over the last decade – related to both terrorist activities and weather emergencies -- as well as the increased possibilities of future terrorist threats.

But some say, better late than never:

“There were many lessons learned from 9/11. One of them was that we were under-utilizing communications technologies in emergencies,” said Genachowski. “It would have been great if we had had something like this available as recently as last month for the tornadoes in the South.”

"Those experiences taught us all and they certainly gave me a deep appreciation of the necessity of communications technologies in times of crisis and times of disaster," said Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski.

The service will be available in New York City and Washington, DC, as early as the end of this year, and it will be available nationwide by April 2012.