With hurricane season expected to pick up soon, the Gloucester County Department of Emergency Management urges Gloucester residents take advantage of the county’s Code Red alert system and the online KnowYourZone tool.

Code Red is a free alert system that sends emergency alerts to residents through phone calls, emails and text messages. Interim Emergency Management Coordinator Jane Wenner said Code Red sends emergency alerts based on a person’s address. For example, if a low-lying area of the county needs to evacuate because of flooding, only those who list their address for that area will be notified.

Wenner said the Code Red system allows them to track how many received the alert and who might have missed it. She said in the years they’ve used the system, only one or two people have not received an alert, which was due to a glitch.

To ensure residents do not confuse Code Red alerts with spam, Wenner recommends that people save the numbers the system uses to make phone calls...