Emergencies and Alerts
Tompkins County
Tompkins County uses a system to send location-specific alerts. The former system was Swift911™️; now the name is SIREN (Safety & Incident Real-Time Emergency Notifications). SIREN provides messages about public safety emergencies, including floods, fires, water emergencies, road closures, missing persons, evacuation orders, and weather emergencies. If you have a listed landline phone, you will automatically receive calls to that phone.
You can sign up to receive the alerts by email, voice message, or text message. There are several ways to sign up and provide your contact and location information. See the options at:
https://tompkinscountyny.gov/siren
Town of Ithaca
In late 2021, the Town of Ithaca joined the county’s system to send emergency or community alert messages about events such as facility closures or water main breaks to residents. Once you have signed up for SIREN, you are able to subscribe to different channels through “Notification Preferences.” Look for Town of Ithaca Community and Emergency alerts in the list of available channels. If you choose to install the app on a mobile phone, you can choose which notifications you wish to receive from within the app.
Cornell University
CornellALERT messages are emergency notifications sent to the Cornell community any time there is an imminent threat to the safety of the community, or for changes in university operations (e.g., closures, delayed start).
To sign up for the alerts, see:
https://emergency.cornell.edu/alert/
Note that anyone can sign up to receive CornellALERT text notifications as a visitor by texting “CornellVisitor” to 226787.
Current alerts (emergency and non-emergency) can be found at:
https://cuinfo.cornell.edu/alerts/
This page also gives instructions for subscribing to the Special Conditions mailing list to get email notifications of road closures, construction delays, or other unusual events on campus.
Cayuga Heights
The Village of Cayuga Heights notification service provides information about public safety emergencies, construction and road closures, utility outages, and other safety and community information
To sign up for the service, see:
https://cayuga-heights.ny.us/for-residents/nixle-police-alerts/
Unaffiliated users are asked to use the Rave Guardian app. See https://www.raveguardian.com/
NYSEG (New York State Electricity and Gas)
NYSEG provides information about power outages on its website:
Ithaca Area Traffic Conditions
Road Conditions: Ithaca/Tompkins. Reports from Mothers, Fathers, & Others is a public Facebook group for “sharing about road conditions in your daily comings and goings, to warn others about dangerous conditions.”
https://www.facebook.com/groups/roadconsditionsithacaarea/
Special Weather Conditions
The AirNow allows you to search (using magnifying glass icon at upper right) by location, e.g., for “Ithaca, NY”, to see the latest readings from nearby air quality sensors. The map is described as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Forest Service (USFS)-led Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). [Note: If you allow your location to be used, you won’t need to search.]