"Our hope is that one of those messages will go through," said Maynard, whose department has been using a beta version of the Everbridge system since January, but plans to officially sign on. "People can give us different pathways to contact them and they can specify if they want their cell phone called first. If that doesn't work, than call the landline or send a text message. We now have multiple options."

Maynard also noted that he can trigger the alert system from an app on his smartphone.

"If I was out in the field and I didn't have access to a computer, I could pull out my cell phone and launch calls to thousands of residents," he added. "That's pretty amazing. It offers some flexibility. I'm not always in my office. I might be in the back of a Suburban with rain and wind blowing."

Maynard said the county adopted a mass system for 911 calls in 2008, which provided access to 46 phones lines at a time, but with 875,000 residents, the system was too slow. Notifying a neighborhood of 2,000 residents could take 45 minutes to three hours, he said.

The new service isn't only for pushing out information, Maynard said. He can use it to gather information from about what county residents are experiencing in specific areas.