The city of Lebanon has established a CodeRED automated alert system to inform citizens of emergencies. Dala Johnson, community services coordinator for the Lebanon Police Department, is in charge of the program.

The system involves Internet-based, prerecorded telephone messages about local events - everything from natural disasters to missing children. The messages may go out to the entire city or to specific neighborhoods.

To put your phone numbers in the data base for CodeRED calls, go to the city of Lebanon website at www.ci.lebanon.or.us.com and sign up. You also may call Johnson at 451-1751. She encourages people to list both their home and cell phone numbers. Addresses are required because calls are sent out by geographical area.

Once you have signed up, your phone number goes into the city's data base. According to the city website, phone numbers will be used only for emergency notification.

The program will work like this: When something happens - fire, flood, water or sewer problem, missing person, need to evacuate, prisoner escape, neighborhood crime watch alert - the police department can go to the list of everyone who has signed up within a specific area and send out a call.

More than 80 people have signed up so far.

Businesses also should sign up.

Johnson said the CodeRED alert system will help police because dispatchers typically get a lot of calls when there's an emergency. With calls going out through the alert system, dispatchers will be freed up to handle other situations.

Johnson sees another benefit, too: building partnerships and increasing community awareness with people not normally known to police.

For assistance or more information, call Johnson at 451-1751.