With a year under it's belt, the Rocky View County Safe and Sound Emergency Notification System is designed to safely and effectively reach rural residents far and wide in Rocky View County alerting them to any emergencies in their area.

Just recently, Rocky View County sent out a test notification and out of the 10,692 users, only 31 did not receive a test message.

Grant Kaiser, Manager of Communication Services with Rocky View County, said Rocky View County needed an efficient way to alert residents but the challenge was distance.

"About a year back, we realized that Rocky View County, because of it's size and because of the different services we offer, really needed a method of contacting our residents to tell them what's going on in an emergency. If you have a fairly confined area, like Airdrie or something, you can tell all of your citizens. But in a place like Rocky View County, you might have to tell somebody in Bragg Creek, for example, something very different than you'd tell somebody in Kathyrn."

If an emergency were to occur, the emergency notification system would only alert those directly affected by the events.

The Safe and Sound notification system also alerts Rocky View residents to construction or road blocks that would directly affect them, as well.

"The sound side of the system is, we also send municipal information through that, such as road closures or changes to the hours of the Waste and Recycling facility, something like that," said Kaiser.

Safe and Sound allows users to enter up to nine different methods of contact to ensure you are alerted as quickly as possible.

"We have the choice that, if it's a serious emergency we just blast the information to every contact you've given us. If it's a slightly lower down emergency, we start contacting you one by one on all of your contact methods until we reach you and to provide you with the information you need," added Kaiser.

According to Kaiser, despite Safe and Sound only running for a year, it has become residents' second choice in receiving information from Rocky View County.

The Safe and Sound Emergency Notification system is designed to alert all rural residents within Rocky View County.

If you are interested in signing up for the Safe and Sound notification system, visit the Safe and Sound website.

If you live in the City of Airdrie and you wish to sign up for an emergency notification system, visit Alberta Emergency Alerts.