CANTON — Residents can receive emergency alerts by email through a service offered by the St. Lawrence County Office of Emergency Services.

“For our county, it’s brand new,” Emergency Services Director Joseph M. Gilbert said. “We’re ready to go public.”

Mr. Gilbert said he got the idea for the service when bad storms were expected to roll across the north country. Although the storms in that instance were not as bad as they could have been, Mr. Gilbert said, he thought it would have been useful to keep residents informed.

In addition to weather, the alerts could be used to tell people about road closings, spills of hazardous material, detours and various other events.

“I don’t want this to be a nuisance, but it could be a one- or two-sentence warning,” Mr. Gilbert said.

Messages also could include updates so people know when an emergency is over.

“We could ramp it up or tamp it down in either direction,” Mr. Gilbert said.

The emails could be read however people receive them, such as on computers or smartphones.

To sign up, an email should be sent to citalert@stlawco.org. County employees will copy and paste the email address of the sender into the automatic alert system. Anyone who later wants to opt out of the service can send a second email with that instruction, Mr. Gilbert said.

The service will be confidential.

“I won’t share the email addresses with anyone,” Mr. Gilbert said.

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