Officials all across Canada say that a new system, set to launch on April 6, will help keep more people out of harm’s way than ever before.

Alert Ready will be replacing the old emergency alert system by enhancing the scope of alert messages by sending notifications out to everyone who has a smartphone with LTE service.

The bulletins that will be pushed right to your cell phone will have all the relevant information you’ll need to keep yourself and your family safe from harm.

Tom Sampson, with the Calgary Emergency Management Agency (CEMA), says that the system is a valuable way for officials to reach everyone in the city as quickly and efficiently as possible.

“This is a huge step forward for us. If you think about things like the 2013 flood, we had to send firefighters and police officers door-to-door in Alberta to tell people to evacuate.”

He says that with 95 percent of Albertans within reach of a smartphone, vital information can be pushed to those devices in disaster situations in a very short time.

Sampson says that the alerts will only be sent out when there are critical situations to which the public needs to be made aware.

“In the whole province of Alberta last year, there were 16 critical alerts sent out. Nine of them were related to fires, six of them were related to severe weather and one was an Amber Alert. So it’s not something we’re going to be hitting your phone with a lot.”

There is no opt-out for Alert Ready, so if your phone is powered on and in an LTE network area, you will receive the message.

“This will allow us to reach people who live here, who work here and people who are visiting. So if you’re from London, Ontario or London, England if you have an LTE phone, you will get the message.”

Sampson says that extensive training of staff members at CEMA will avoid any sort of misfires of critical alerts.

“We limit the number of people that can have access. We do a lot of communication around our tests and we not only have to issue the alarm, but we also have to retract the alarm and so each and every time, our staff are required to do that monthly.”

The only agencies that have access to post alerts on the app in the southern Alberta area are local emergency management groups, the Calgary Police Service and Environment Canada.

He adds that Alert Ready won’t become the only way that officials notify the public about emergencies. Alert information will still be posted on the City of Calgary website and on the Alberta Emergency Alert app.

A nation-wide test of the new system will be conducted on May 9, 2018 and, after that, test alerts will be sent out on an annual basis.