Emergency Alerts

A: Emergency alerts are sent 24/7 when there is an immediate threat to life and/or property. As an example, alerts may include boil water notices, police alerts due to an active threat, evacuation notices, hazardous materials warnings, or alerts for missing persons. You may also opt-in to receive severe weather alerts for local severe weather watches and warnings issued by the National Weather Service.

Complete your profile online to select the types of alerts you wish to receive.

A: If you enrolled for CodeRED alerts prior to June 15, 2023, your information has been imported to the new alert system, and will remain enrolled for 6 months. To continue to receiving emergency alerts, we encourage you to complete your profile online. This will additionally allow you to customize your alert preferences and provide any addresses you wish to receive alerts for. (e.g. home and work)

A: Yes. Your phone number will never be shared or sold. The information that you provide is exempt from public disclosure and will be used for emergency purposes only. A variety of “opt-in” mechanisms are available to ensure you are getting just the messages you want to receive, delivered via the devices and communications modes that you choose.

Yes. You can choose your preferred delivery methods in your online profile.

Charlottesville and Albemarle Alerts are managed through a partnership between the CUA ECC and the region’s public safety agencies.

UVA Alerts are managed by the University of Virginia’s Department of Emergency Management.

Yes. While translations may not be available for all alerts, you are able to specify a preferred language for your alerts in your online profile.

Depending on your phone carrier, your CUA 911 text alerts will arrive from short code number 226787, 67283, 78015, 81437 or 22911. We recommend saving these numbers into your phone so that you will recognize them.

To quickly save these numbers as a contact in your phone, you may scan the QR code below:

No! This service is provided by the CUA ECC and regional partners at no cost to the public; however, message and data rates may apply.

While CUA 911 Alerts is an excellent system, we cannot guarantee that you will receive notification in all cases. Disasters and emergencies are chaotic and unpredictable, and notification is dependent on external providers such as your wireless carrier or email delivery service outside the ECC’s control. CUA 911 Alerts will use several means of communications to try to ensure that should any one communications method, technology, or delivery option be unavailable to reach community members, other methods will be used to improve the likelihood that they will see the message.

You can visit your local library to sign up online. Additionally, watch for upcoming events held with regional partners to sign up in person.

If you previously had a Smart911 account that you are no longer able to access, or otherwise have any issue creating or accessing your login, please submit a support ticket with the details to Smart911.