With Emergency Preparedness Week ongoing in Manitoba, the province has launched the MB Ready app, designed to be a one-stop shop for all your emergency preparedness needs.
Lisa Naylor is Manitoba's Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure. She's also the minister responsible for the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization, which played a hand in Wednesday's test of the Alert Ready system. Naylor said the MB Ready app takes something the EMO already had on their website, and makes it a lot better and more accessible.
"We had a web based experience that we rolled out last summer in the middle of the fire season, but we've been working ever since on developing an app because there's so much more that we can provide in terms of service to Manitobans...everything from fires, to floods, to hydro outages, it's even going to connect with Manitoba 511 to know about where there's road closures, so it's really an all-encompassing public emergency information app for the province," said Naylor.
With all these different bits of information within the app, it'll be coming from a lot of different sources, like the RCMP and the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization, and Manitoba Hydro. Another great benefit of the app is the ease-of-use factor.
"Access to information from police alerts that are issued by the RCMP, non-weather related alerts that may be issued by the Manitoba Emergency Mangement Organization, obviously flood and fires or any other hazard such as that, power outages...all of that information is currently available on the Emergency Management Organization website, but folks don't always go to that. So this is there on your personal device, there's maps around the province, there will be information, in the event of an emergency, information about evacuation locations," said Naylor.
Naylor said there's a lot of customization available for users as well, including the ability to select specific zones to get notifications for, and uploading personal information for emergency use.
"It gives you the chance to watch up to 10 different zones, maybe your home, your workplace, your cottage, or where you go hunting, it gives you the chance to see what's going on in that location and to sign up for notifications if you wish...folks can upload their own personal information like ID or insurance information, that just stays on your phone, so it's not accessible to anybody else, but in the event of an emergency if you're leaving a place quickly or if you're not able to return to your home in the event of an emergency, you've got all that at your fingertips," said Naylor.
The MB Ready app is available on both Apple and Android devices, and is available in both official languages.
