BENTONVILLE — Benton County Emergency Services wants you.

The county’s new public alert system has gone live but county officials need more information to make sure the system performs the way residents want.

Anyone who wants to receive telephone calls, email and text messages in the case of an emergency in the county can visit www bcalert.com to tailor the service to their unique needs.

Live in Centerton, work in Bentonville and have parents who live in Bella Vista? The alert system can send you alerts for all three cities for any number of emergencies. The system also allows you to select the kinds of alerts you receive, Josh Billis, emergency communications coordinator, said Thursday during a demonstration of the system.

The alert system sends out notifications for tornado warnings and other emergency situations in the county, but it will not send notifications for ice storms severe weather, sleet, flash flooding and more than 37 other warnings to residents unless those warnings are requested.

Residents must log into the system to add their cell phone numbers, pager numbers and e-mail addresses in order to get the latest alerts in real time, Billis said. Only home telephone numbers were automatically loaded into the alert system.

Residents who do not want to get the alerts can also opt out of the system, said Matt Garrity, manager of emergency services.

“We encourage residents to try it for a while before they decide to opt out of it because if they get that tornado warning and it saves just one life, then it’s worth it,” Garrity said.

Having the telephone notification system is good for the county because not all residents can hear tornado sirens.

“In cities where they have tornado sirens, the only thing they can do is flip a switch and hope someone hears it, where as we know we are getting in touch with someone by calling them,” Garrity said.

Signing up for the service takes less than a minute and can be done at www.bcalert.

com. From there, residents will need to follow the prompts, enter their phone numbers, e-mail address and physical address before selecting the kinds of alerts they want to receive.

Rachel Tracy, an administrative assistant for the Department of Emergency Services, watched the demonstration of how to set up an account Thursday.

“It seems pretty easy and it’s very user friendly,” Tracy said.

Billis said several people already have contacted the Department of Emergency Services to have the service tailored for their needs.

Garrity said county officials will begin holding town hall meetings in the next two weeks to sign up people who need help or who do not own a computer.

“We are going to be out and about trying to find everyone in the county to get them signed up,” Billis said.

News, Pages 7 on 07/28/2010