ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) -- It's an unmistakable sound; the sound of an emergency. Now, in the modern world, those messages come right to our fingertips, through our cell phones.
"These government alerts have three different components, the Amber Alert, the Emergency Alerts and Public Safety Alerts," Rochester Emergency Management Director Ken Jones said.
The city of Rochester has been able to alert folks through push cell phone notifications since 2012. Since last December, the city has been able to send these messages locally and for less, threatening situations that they call "civil emergency messages," which falls into the Public Safety Alert category.
"We could only use them for life threatening emergencies, but, recently they had been encouraging us to use it for what they call a civil emergency message, or some sort of public safety use," Jones said. "Less than life threatening, but it would be good to let people know."
Civil Emergency Messages or CEM as Jones calls it, could mean a variety of things. From a car crash that's causing a serious back up -- like the crash on Valleyhigh Road NW Wednesday night -- to something more serious, like flooding or a shelter in place.
Along with these new messages, city officials can also determine who gets the alert, depending on where they are located at the time.
"If you're not in the area when it goes out, but you happen to drive in a half hour later, you're going to get the alert," Jones said.
That explains why some people got the alert for the crash Wednesday night, and others didn't.
"It turned out it was only a couple blocks away," Rochester resident Ryan Paris said. Paris lives near the crash scene and got the alert Wednesday night. Hearing the blare of the siren put him on edge.
"On one hand I understand that they want people to clear the area," he said. "They want you to stay away from the area and deal with the accident. But, at the same time, car accidents are something that happen every day. And I would not want that blaring noise on my phone every day."
Jones says regarding the Valleyhigh crash, the CEM alert was something they debated doing in the first place.
"We knew that it was a busy road," he said. "So, we decided to send an alert out that would let people know to avoid that area and to seek alternative routes of travel."
The adapting update is something Jones and his team will reflect and review. He said it's a learning process.
"We try to reserve it for the more important things," Jones added. "We may not do this sort of alert in the future. This sort of feedback is really good for us. But, we know some people don't want to get Amber Alerts, but they are really important."
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EMERGENCY ALERTS: Rochester officials break down phone alerts following Valleyhigh crash - KTTC
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