In the middle of storm season and extreme heat advisories the Levelland-Hockley County Emergency Management is urging residents and business owners to register for weather related and emergency notifications to stay informed and alerted in case of emergencies.
Residents are encouraged to go to RUAWARE.US to register for Hockley County Alerts. Business Owners in Hockley County can go to https://r.iinfo. com/hockleycobizcontact for business alerts.
Also, individuals are encouraged to check their wireless device has the “emergency alerts by location” turned on. That will allow notifications to come through similar to the amber alerts but are initiated locally for emergency situations such as tornado warning or dynamic police incidents.
Individuals should not assume that getting amber alerts to their phone their settings are correct for the notification; people will have to allow location alerts.
What location alert means is it will send the message based off geographical boundaries; the alert can be isolated to a specific area for only those within the preset boundary to receive the notification. This is a voluntary activation as amber alert system is not voluntary.
All alerts through this system come from local officials; never spam, solicitation calls, text messages or emails. All of the text messages will come from the same number so it can be saved in contacts to be easily recognized.
The phone calls will come through with the office of emergency management number 806-568-5487 so it can be saved and easily recognizable as well.
In addition to storm season getting into full-swing, grass fires are expected to be of concern with the large amount of fuel scattered across the county and west Texas.
Hockley County and surrounding counties have had precipitation scattered through the past months, however, much of West Texas has loaded large amounts of fuel with how hot tempertures have reached this summer.
Levelland-Hockley County Emergency Management Coordinator Cole Kirkland explained that Hockley County citizens have followed the current rules in place of burning things on their properties.
Kirkland explained that some of the factors that have started grass fires could be low hanging chains on trailers causing sparks on roadways, thrown out cigarette buds, powerlines or equipment that shorts and causes sparks.