SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The alert number for Sacramento County's Office of Emergency Services [OES] is no longer going to be (999) 999-9999. Sacramento County's OES is switching it out with a number for its upcoming system's test that your phone provider won't think is spam.
The county OES is testing out the new number on Oct. 17 at 10:17 a.m. That new number is (833)4-CalAle(rt) or (833) 422-5253.
The new number would only send out automated messages, which means it won't be able to receive calls or texts.
OES has been working on the alert change for the last couple of months, but it just secured the number a few days ago, according to Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins, the emergency operations coordinator for the county OES.
Flynn-Nevins said a new California law that targets robocalls would allow telephone companies to block OES' original numbers as spam.
"People would recognize that number; robocall systems would recognize that number. They know it was a message from our office," Flynn-Nevins said.
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ABC10 reporter Becca Habegger, tweeted in March that she didn't answer a call that alerted her to a local emergency, thinking it was a robocall because of the number. She said she would have picked up the phone if she knew who was calling her.
Flynn-Nevins said Habegger's tweet partially inspired Sacramento OES to change its number.
"We remembered this question you asked and took action," OES retweeted back to Habegger's tweet.
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