ALAMOSA — On Sunday, June 23, at 4:51 a.m., many San Luis Valley residents were alerted of an emergency by the Reverse 911 system maintained by Alamosa County.

The reverse system operates across the country and sends emergency calls, texts, and emails alerting people to various events including natural disasters, evacuations, school emergencies and safety threats.

In 2009, Connecticut became the first state in the nation to utilize a reverse 911 system and now they are deployed across the U.S. and Canada. in 2004, reverse 911 was used in Granby, Colorado to notify residents of a bulldozer rampage. Reverse 911 was used in during the 2012 Sandy Hook — Newtown Connecticut school shooting. And locally the system has been used twice locally in the last few weeks.

If you did not receive the message sent out last Sunday morning, signing up to receive the notifications is easy. Go to the Alamosa County website at www.alamosacounty.colorado.gov and go to the red tab on the site, "Sign Up for Alamosa County Emergency Alerts," and click on it to be directed to the Hyper-Reach website and sign up. The website was launched in 1995 by the Asher Group, a computer service provider.

According to the company, Hyper-Reach is a leading provider of mass, enterprise and team notification systems for public safety, other government agencies and companies throughout North America.