BRIGHTON, Colo. — The City of Brighton encourages all people who work, visit and live in its jurisdiction to enroll in CodeRed, an online mass notification system, but the city is calling for this action now more than ever.
Emergency management coordinator Stephanie Hackett said the city's entire outdoor emergency alert system is down. Luckily, outside of regular monthly testing, she said it isn't used very often.
"They’re used for emergencies relatively infrequently," Hackett said. "Our last tornado warning, I want to say, was October 2022."
On April 18, the city shared on social media that there was an issue with the system.
Tiffany Green, a Brighton resident of more than 20 years and owner of the Pickled Pepper, said she didn't realize the system had been down for so long. She only learned about it Tuesday.
"That’s a little concerning," Green said. "That’s concerning the community doesn’t know. I feel like I’m pretty active in the community, so that I didn’t know is a little ironic."
She said she lives across the street from one of the alert systems, stationed at a fire station. She said she's familiar with hearing it every first Wednesday of the month for testing.
"I guess I wasn’t too concerned because I thought it would be fixed," Green said. "Kind of like the power goes out, you know it’s coming back but I don’t know anything beyond that but I would be surprised if it wasn’t fixed soon."
Hackett couldn't say how, why or when the outage occurred. She said a private contractor is doing a study on the entire system and will then present a report.
"The impact is that we’re trying to promote other ways of getting information," Hackett said.
The city said it has used CodeRed alerts for the last 10 years. Since October 2023, the city had more than 12,000 people register for notifications for Brighton.
"You fill out a quick form, indicate what areas you’d like notifications about and that's all you need to do to sign up," Hackett said.
Those wanting to register for CodeRed emergency alerts can visit Brightonco.gov/CodeRedAdams or Brightonco.gov/CodeRedWeld
The city does not have a timeline for when the outdoor system will come back online.
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