Here’s what you need to know about getting phone alerts for tornadoes
Do you want to get phone warnings for severe weather like the tornadoes that hit the metro-east Saturday?
Here’s what you need to know:
▪ Area governments, including St. Clair County and Belleville, offer a free service called CodeRED.
▪ You can go to the websites for the county and city to sign up for the service.
▪ The alerts are available on your cellphone or on your landline.
“They definitely did their job this time,” Herb Simmons, director of the St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency, said Monday. “We were actually getting alerts before the storm even got on this side of the river.”
St. Clair County has 150,946 residents and 22,457 businesses signed up for the CodeRED service as of Monday, Simmons said.
The National Weather Service has said eight tornadoes hit the St. Louis metropolitan area on Saturday, with four in the metro-east and four in Missouri, according to a preliminary assessment updated on Monday. Previously, the service had said there were seven tornadoes.
No injuries were reported but the tornadoes knocked down trees and caused property damage and power outages.
This story was originally published April 17, 2023 at 2:16 PM.
