When an emergency is happening on UNC’s campus, students, faculty and staff get an Alert Carolina text message delivered directly to their phone number. But how can Chapel Hill residents get those same safety notifications?
According to the university, anyone who wants them has to download the Carolina Ready Safety App.
The app was first launched in July 2020, but it has seen multiple revisions since. Most recently, according to UNC’s Emergency Management Coordinator Justin Miller, a new “I’m OK!” feature was added to the homepage.
“‘I’m OK!’ is a way to allow your loved ones, your family, your friends know that you’re okay during a major emergency,” Miller said.
In advance of an emergency, app users can add up to three text and three email contacts who they want to be one click away. By pressing the “I’m OK!” button, every contact on their list will receive a pin with the sender’s current location and a prewritten message:
“‘Hey, I’m OK. I may not be able to talk right now, just wanted to let you know that I’ll reach out when I’m able to.’ So the person can really focus on being safe in the moment,” Miller added.
Miller said the feature was created because of feedback they got after the two lockdowns on UNC’s campus last fall semester.
The first lockdown was on August 28, 2023 when Professor Zijie Yan was shot and killed in Caudill Laboratory, allegedly by graduate student Tailei Qi. Just 16 days later, campus went into a second lockdown when an armed person brought a gun to Alpine Bagel Cafe inside the Student Union.
Both lockdowns caused the campus and broader Chapel Hill-Carrboro community to reassess how they react in emergency situations, and think about what responsibility the university has to update the neighboring community. Miller said the app’s target audience includes Franklin Street employees and Chapel Hill residents, not just people connected to the university.
“We had the community in mind,” he said “Prior to this app, the university didn’t really have a a solid mechanism to send our Alert Carolina messages to non-students or non-employees outside of our traditional social media platforms.”
Alerts are also posted to the Alert Carolina website and on its X, formally known as Twitter, and Facebook feeds, but without enrolling in notifications through those apps, the sites have to be open to see the latest updates. The Carolina Ready app, though, will send a push notification to someone’s screen to help it be more visible to users.
Lorenzo Zagarella, who has been an employee at Italian Pizzeria III on Franklin Street for the last nine years, was working in Lenoir Dining Hall on campus when the first lockdown happened.
“I was just kind of waiting for the all okay from the cafeteria staff, more or less,” he said. “That’s all I was getting information from at the time, other than that, you could have told me there was somebody on campus and I wouldn’t have known any otherwise.”
After the first lockdown, Zagarella signed up for alert notifications, and he wasn’t the only one.
According to UNC Emergency Management and Planning, at 8 a.m. on Aug. 28, 2023, 15,760 people had enabled Alert Carolina push notifications from the Carolina Ready Safety App. The number increased to 19,413 the same night. On Sept. 19, following the second lockdown, the number of people registered increased again to 22,758.
After downloading the Carolina Ready Safety App, a screen pops up prompting users to enroll in push notifications. The setting can later be changed in the preferences section of the app.
Aaron Nelson, the president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, said he encourages local community members to enroll in notifications too.
“If our business community, employees of local enterprises, have this app on their phone, then they can be kept up to date directly from the university on what’s happening,” Nelson said.
Nelson also said he thinks the university has a responsibility to update its neighboring community.
“I also think our university is not like Disney World.’ Nelson said, “Disney World gets to say, ‘hey, what happens inside the gate is our business and you all in Orlando, you mind your show and we’ll mind ours.’ It’s different here and we’ve had chancellors that reminds us that even these low stone walls ought not to divide us, and our university know’s that its impact on the broader community is substantial and vice versa. And the more we can do to increase communication across those stone walls the better.”
Miller said he hopes community members will remember the app is just “one tool in the toolbox” and that emergency management systems aim to be redundant to reach as many people as possible.
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