LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It can make a life-saving difference when seconds matter and takes just minutes to sign up from your phone or desktop. It's the Louisville Emergency Notification System, or LENSAlert.
"It's a very robust system," Jody Meiman, the director of Louisville Metro Emergency Services, said. "People can take 10 minutes to sign up and choose the alerts they want to get, whether it's an Amber Alert, traffic emergency, severe weather, hazardous materials. It's a very good way for people to know what's going on in real time because those notifications are coming from our 911 center."
These LENS Alerts go beyond Louisville's borders, reaching residents in Bullitt, Oldham, Nelson and Washington Counties and can translate into a variety of languages. And that's only part of this system designed to not only keep you safe, but get to you as fast as possible when the emergency is yours.
"If you have to call 911 from that device, your profile pops up on the call taker's screen, so it eliminates the time for them to have to ask you some of the questions, because it's already populated right there," Meiman said.
It's called Smart911, giving first responders quick access to your information when clear communication is key.
"Sometimes, they call and are so hysterical we can't get information from them," Dana Frost, a MetroSafe call taker, said. "We can get their generalized location, but say they're in an apartment building, we have no idea which one they're in unless they have Smart911."
The profile is as extensive as you want it to be.
"It includes their name, address, who lives there, their ages, any kind of medical conditions, the cars they drive, pets," Frost said. "On this one, it's showing they've got allergies, cognitive issues, and they're deaf."
You can also include details about your living situation.
"Maybe you fell in the house somewhere and no one could hear you," Meiman said. "You can put a gate code, or garage code in where emergency responders can get in without breaking a door down."
There's nothing to lose in signing up, but everything to gain.
"There was a gentleman in a smoke filled room, who couldn't get his address out because he kept coughing," Meiman said. "And the [call taker], all they had to say was, 'are you at home?' And he said, 'yes.' They sent the fire department to the home using his Smart911 profile."
In a recent case of domestic violence, Smart911 allowed Frost to text her caller when it was too dangerous for her to speak.
"She didn't want to talk on the phone, so we disconnected after I started texting with her through Smart911," Frost said.
Without that option, Frost said there's no telling what situation her caller would have been in that day.
MetroSafe serves around 780,000 people throughout Louisville but only 50,000 are signed up for LENS Alerts, about 6% of the population, and fewer have Smart911 profiles.
If you'd like to sign up, it's simple. Text "LENSAlert" to 67283 and start receiving emergency notifications.
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