FAIRBURY - In the event of a crisis, a collection of counties in Southeast Nebraska are connected through an alert system that enables emergency personnel to warn people who might be in harm's way, even if they reside inside a different county.

Jefferson County joined up with a half dozen others in that part of the state this month by agreeing to extend an interlocal agreement with emergency notification system Everbridge.

John McKee, who heads up emergency management efforts in both Jefferson and Saline Counties, says Emergency Managers in any of the connected counties can now spread the word to people in the other counties whenever a crisis arises.

"The other main thing that it does is it breaks down county boundaries," McKee said at a meeting of the Jefferson County board of commissioners earlier in October. "If we all go individually, if [Gage County] were to put out an alert that they had a [gas] release and it was headed towards Tri County school, it would stop at the county line and we would not get the information. Same thing with anything in our county going a different way, or with what I’ve got in Saline County going into Crete."

And the main objective of all of this is to increase the number of covered people in covered regions in case of any kind of crisis - prior to this arrangement, coverage wasn't always a certainty.

"Before, when Crete was being dispatched by Southeast Communications, there was a boundary at the Crete city limits, so if something happened out in farmland it [the alert] would not get into Crete. And that would cause major issues, because they’ve got to get ahold of me, and there’s time needed. Now, anyone of us EMs can put the message out to the public."

The city of Beatrice approved a similar measure in September. The agreement also covers Thayer, Fillmore, Saline and Nuckolls Counties and the western part of Gage County.

Clay County is considering joining the mix, and the group has also reached out to counties in the far eastern part of the state - many of which are also covered, at least in part, by Everbridge - about potentially expanding this agreement in the future.

"We’ve started a little bit of discussion about making us one big group, but since their nuclear plants are involved in that it might not happen," McKee said. "Only eastern Gage County would be the issue, but for Gage west to Nuckolls, Thayer, Saline and Fillmore...we’re all one big happy group."

"It’s actually a pretty good deal, for what we pay, we get a lot of service," board chairman Mark Schoenrock said.

"And the more and more of us that go together, the cheaper it becomes," McKee concluded.