Cameron County leaders are looking to boost registration of an alert they say can save lives during an emergency.

As the executive director of the Cameron County Emergency Communication District, Joel Davila oversees the CodeRED emergency alert system.

The system provides an alert to the public that can be activated by county and city leaders.

“If there is a hurricane proceeding and the county judge wants to evacuate the whole county, he would do that via CodeRED," Davila said.

City or county leaders will notify dispatchers about the need for an alert, and it's the dispatcher who is responsible for sending out the mass notification.

Only people who are in the immediate "danger zone" will get the alert on their cell phone, landline telephone or email.

“It might say shelter in place, or it might say evacuate, so whoever initiated the alert are the ones responsible for that message,” Davila said.

Officials said they want to make sure they can alert as many people as possible before or during an emergency, especially after the recent Central Texas floods.

Around 92,000 people are signed up for CodeRED alerts in Cameron County, or about a quarter of the population in Cameron County who is eligible to sign up.

Davila said a version of CodeRED has been in place for 15 years, but it's only been activated a handful of times because of the low amount of people who have registered.

You can register for the CodeRED alerts online.

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