Twitter launches local emergency service alerts SOCIAL media network Twitter has today launched its emergency alert service in Australia to help police, fire rescue and other emergency services disseminate critical information to their followers. Local organisations that have signed up so far are the NSW Rural Fire Service (@NSWRFS), NSW Police (@nswpolice), Victorian Police (@VictoriaPolice), Queensland Police (@QPSmedia), Western Australia Police (@WA_Police), South Australian Police (@SAPoliceNews), Australian Government's travel advisory (@smartraveller), the Department of Health (@healthgovau), Fire & Rescue NSW (@FRNSW), Country Fire Service South Australia (@CFSAlerts), the City of Brisbane (@brisbanecityqld), City of Sydney (@CityofSydney) and the Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU). The organisations will be able to mark urgent Tweets as "alerts" which will feature an orange bell for added visibility in their followers' feeds. Twitter users who sign up for an account's Twitter Alerts will also get notifications on their phones via text message whenever the account marks a tweet as an alert. "All of the organisations participating in today's launch already use Twitter as a tool to communicate important information to their followers," Twitter Australia media partnerships director Danny Keen said. We hope this will be a useful, additional channel for emergency service organisations to broadcast need-to-know information that will rise above regular tweet activity. Twitter said the alerts service, which launched in the US, Japan and Korea in September and in Britain last month, had already been used in emergency situations. In October the body responsible for security and safety at the US Senate sent out an alert and a "shelter in place" warning when news broke of a runaway car and shooting. In Britain the Environmental Agency and Essex Police used Twitter earlier this month to warn residents of flooding risks. During the October bush fires the NSW Rural Fire Service saw more than 20 million impressions and 18,300 retweets of its Twitter messages as well as 470 million impressions of tweets with the #nswfires hashtag, NSW RFS deputy commissioner Rob Rogers said. "The NSW RFS uses Twitter not only to push out information and warnings to the community during major bush fire emergencies, but also as an intelligence tool, pulling information in which can assist with the fire fighting effort," he said. The NSW Police Force said it tweeted about 15 times a day, putting out information such as abducted child alerts and warnings of major traffic chaos or road closures. Brisbane City Council said it had used Twitter to help disseminate information during the January 2011 floods and this year's Australia Day storms. To subscribe to alert notifications, users can go directly to an account's set-up page at twitter.com/[username]/alerts. Web users can see if an organisation is part of the program by visiting its Twitter profile.