Alert Santa Fe / Smart 911 Frequently Asked Questions
What is Alert Santa Fe?
Alert Santa Fe is the mobile phone and email "Opt-In" alerting system utilized by both the County of Santa Fe and City of Santa Fe, via the Regional Emergency Communications Center and other partners. We send various alerts, from traffic activity, police alerts, closures, public transportation disruption, and event information.
What is Smart 911?
Smart 911 is Alert Santa Fe, but Smart 911 is your account profile. Smart 911 is much bigger than just Alert Santa Fe. You can build your Smart 911 profile to customize your needs and requests, to help enhance your 911 experience. You will need to go to Smart 911 Santa Fe to create and build your profile. In that profile, you can add medical information, home access information, access functional needs, medications, medical documents you can upload, vehicles, pictures, even pets from dogs to horses, diagnosed health conditions, or people in your household you are taking care of or need assistance. You can add household members, their numbers and emails (they can still opt-out), emergency contacts and more!
I Built My Profile, Now What?
The next time you call 911 from any of your registered numbers, from Santa Fe County, your profile will be displayed to the 911 dispatcher to relay that important information to our first responders. Enhancing your emergency response. ***
Also you will start receiving alerts to your email and mobile phone numbers.
What is "Opt-In"?
Opt-in means you signed up! You registered your phone number and email address to recieve alerts. You can select what type of alerts you want, such as traffic alerts, weather alerts, event alerts, closures, etc...You can do that HERE.
I'm Receiving Alerts, but Never Signed Up...
If you wish to stop receiving alerts from Alert Santa Fe, simply reply "Stop" to the text message and you should be un-enrolled. Also, your number could be new, and the previous owner never deactivated their phone number from Smart 911 or Alert Santa Fe. If the alert is a "life safety" issue, such as a shelter in place, or evacuation. You were possibly in the affected area and that is known as a "force push" alert and you should heed the emergency message for your safety.
When I Register for Smart 911, It's Telling me my Number is already connected to an account...What do I do?
While not uncommon, sometimes people sign-up for Alert Santa Fe and forget. There should be an option to continue setting up your Smart 911 profile with the existing phone number. It could also be that the previous phone number holder had signed up for Alert Santa Fe or Smart 911 as well and never updated their information. All you need to do is continue the account setup, as stated, and continue building your profile.
What is a "force push" notification?
A force push notification means you will receive the message whether you are signed up or not. This usually pertains to life safety emergencies and rarely get sent out. These types of alerts are generally "geo located" meaning, if you aren't in the affected area, you shouldn't recieve the message. If you do receive it, it could mean you are in the affected area and should heed the emergency message immediately.
What if I don't want to opt-in? Will I still recieve emergency alerts?
Yes and No. You won't recieve any alerts from Alert Santa Fe. You WILL however, recieve serious life safety emergency alerts via a different protocol, that could affect you. Such as evacuations, shelter-in-place, reverse 911 etc.. You will still recieve those, whether you sign up or not. But if you'd like to know if a highway is closed, severe weather is incoming or possibly a public safety power shutoff. We strongly suggest you sign up today! We also suggest you build your Smart 911 profile FIRST, in Smart 911 you can sign up for Alert Santa Fe while building your profile and it gives you the options of what type of alerts you'd like to recieve, customizing it to your wants and needs.
What is Reverse 911?
Reverse 911 is a feature that our 911 operators have used for many years. Reverse 911 sends a recorded message back to your land-line telephone telling you what to do like "shelter in place". You must have a land line in order to recieve a reverse 911. However, due to emerging technologies, and the obsolescence of land lines, in addition to the migration of the general public to cell phones, was why we integrated Alert Santa Fe and Smart 911 into the Regional Emergency Communications Center. However, for a Reverse 911, there's no need to register the number, it's simply selected on a map for the affected area. A Reverse 911 can only be requested by first responders for a specific incident. *
What if I Change Phone Numbers?
You simply need to log into your Smart 911 profile and verify and change to the new number.
What if I Move to a New Address?
You just need to update your Smart 911 profile. If you move out of state or out of Santa Fe County, deactivate your smart 911 account, and you can reply Stop to any messages you recieve. Your new local jurisdiction may have a similar alerting system. Unless of course you still wish to know what is going on in Santa Fe County!
Scan the QR code to get started or click here.
*** Alert Santa Fe is available to anyone who lives, works, travels through or visits Santa Fe, and to City Public Utility customers. Notifications are not issued for every event. Due to factors beyond the control of the City and County of Santa Fe, there is no guarantee of notifications.
* Reverse 911 is at the request of an on scene responder or supervisor. Not RECC. A reverse 911 can not be guranteed, but will not work if you don't have a land line.
It should be mentioned for Smart 911, even though you may upload medical information that could pre-emptively answer a dispatchers questions they are asking you, they are mandated by policy, and required by dispatch certification boards to ask certain questions, despite having your Smart 911 profile displayed to them. So we ask to please answer the dispatchers questions completely. Thank you.
For further assistance with your Smart 911 account, contact OEM Coordinator Kyle Russell at 505-428-3102.