Emergency notification system available for Harlan Countians

Published 8:03 am Friday, July 25, 2025

Recent flooding events across the nation such as flash flooding in Texas which resulted in nearly 100 deaths highlights the importance of receiving notification of emergency situations in a timely manner. Harlan County residents have an option to sign up to have emergency notifications sent immediately to their phone at no cost.

Harlan County Emergency Management Director Stephen Lewis provided some information on the county’s emergency notification system.

“The name of the software is Hyper-Reach,” Lewis said. “It’s our free emergency weather notification system here in Harlan County. It’s been in place since about 2022.”

Harlan County Judge-Executive Dan Mosley talked about the warning system during a recent Harlan County Fiscal Court meeting.

“I want to take a moment to talk about the importance of our emergency alert notification system,” Mosley said. “As we’ve seen here in the last few weeks, the importance of those mechanisms has never been greater based on what we’ve seen occur in Texas just a few weeks ago with the flash flooding on July 4. It was a terrible tragedy.”

Mosley stated emergency notification systems can provide a timely warning when every second counts.

“It’s important to know what’s going on so you can make an effort to protect yourself and your family,” Mosley said.

Mosley noted Harlan Countians may sign up for Hyper-Reach free of charge.

“The Fiscal Court pays an annual subscription cost for that for any Harlan County resident that wants to put their home phone number and/or cell phone number on there,” Mosley said. “If you’re not getting those notifications, I would encourage you to go to the Harlan County Emergency Management Facebook page, it’s pinned right to the top on how to sign up. It’s really easy…I can’t stress the importance of this enough.”

Lewis explained that many Harlan Countians may not be aware the system is available, even though the system is easy to use.

“Before we started this campaign, right around 1,400 residents in the county were signed up for it,” Lewis said. “We’re doing another push. We found some more ways to promote it, like there’s a QR code you can scan and that can be put on flyers to make it easier. With an Alexa device, all you have to do is say ‘Alexa, enable Hyper-Reach’ and it will automatically set it up for you.”

According to Lewis, all the information needed to sign up for Hyper-Reach is available on the Harlan County Emergency Management Facebook page.

There are multiple reasons signing up for Hyper-Reach is advantageous.

“It’s a phone notification system,” Lewis said. “You can sign up with your cellphone, your home (land line) phone or both of them. It will send you weather alerts as soon as they’re issued by the National Weather Service straight to your phone.”

Lewis mentioned the service provides important warnings such as tornado warnings, flash flood warnings, and severe thunderstorm warnings.

“It’s on 24/7, it automatically sends those out to your phone and alerts you no matter where you are,” Lewis said. “It’s another layer in our alert system for Harlan County residents.”

Lewis noted cellphone notifications are the most likely to reach people immediately since most people have their cell phone near at all times.

“The people that have signed up for it really like it,” Lewis said. “It lets them know very quickly what’s going on.”

Lewis mentioned the system can also be utilized for additional issues such as notifying people where water is available during water outages and for helping locate missing persons.

“We can sit here in the office, choose the area we want to send an alert to and send notifications to people in just that area,” Lewis said. “If a large disaster happens and we have to have evacuations or if we have to issue shelter information, we can get that information to them in an emergency situation.”

For more information, go to the Harlan County Emergency Management Facebook page or call the Harlan County Emergency Management office 606-573-6082 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.