Update on Purdue Alert Twitter process

Purdue Alert is the mass notification process utilized by Purdue University to share information about imminent threats to safety and health for the West Lafayette Purdue University community. Purdue Alert messages are shared through multiple layers, based on the specifics of the emergency, in order to provide brief information messages quickly to as many people as possible. 

Messages are pushed to appropriate layers of the system by the Environmental Health and Public Safety office, based on the specifics of the emergency. All members of the Purdue community with a purdue.edu email address are encouraged to sign up for Purdue Alert text messages. Those without a purdue.edu address that wish to receive emergency notifications may do so utilizing their Twitter account.  

A recent change by Twitter.com now requires users to sign up for a Twitter account in order to “follow” @purdueemergency. Instructions to sign up for a free Twitter account can be found at https://help.twitter.com/en/create-twitter-account. Once you have opened a Twitter account, you can sign up for Purdue Alerts in one of two ways:  

1. Sign into your Twitter account, navigate to the @purdueemergency page and click “follow”
2. Text 40404 from the phone number on your Twitter account and type follow purdueemergency in the text box.

In order to verify that you are properly signed up to receive Purdue Alert messages, a test of the system will occur on Monday, September 27, 2018, between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m. Eastern. If you do not receive the test text message, you should refer to the twitter.com process above, as you may need to open a Twitter account.

Due to the limitations of text messaging, the initial Purdue Alert message will serve as a brief “heads up” that something is happening. Follow up information will appear as it is available on Purdue’s campus status page at www.purdue.edu/ea.  

Questions about the Purdue Alert emergency notification sign-up process may be sent to ehps@purdue.edu .