WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio — An Air Force-wide migration of the Emergency Mass Notification System requires all military and civilian personnel to take critical steps to update their after-hours contact information for emergency notifications

Personnel must ensure their information is up-to-date in the new cloud-based EMNS prior to Feb. 22 to ensure they can be reached, regardless of their physical location, in the event an emergency or tragic event occurs. The system will be available for Hill AFB personnel to update beginning Feb. 15.

“In the event of a natural disaster such as a hurricane or a tornado, or if there is a serious attack or threat to an installation, we need to be able to reach all of our employees to make sure they are safe and accounted for,” said Master Sgt. Todd Wireman, a command and control operations training and standardization manager at AFMC. “The EMNS is a key tool for helping keep our people safe and informed in emergency situations.”

To update their information, personnel can access the globe icon on their system desktop screens and choose the “Access Self-Service” option. Personnel are required to provide an after-hours phone number, though additional, optional information such as an alternate telephone number or email address can be added as well.

“We need to be able to reach all of our personnel as soon as possible — ideally immediately, but no longer than 10 minutes after a threat or incident is identified and verified, so can we provide instructions,” said Wireman. “We want to keep you informed and safe.”

All military and non-bargaining civilian personnel are required to provide an after-hours contact number or email for emergency notifications. Providing this information is voluntary for bargaining unit employees, contractors and non-appropriated employees.

The Air Force began the initial roll-out of the new enterprise-wide EMNS system to Air Force major commands at the end of 2018, with Air Combat Command among the first to fully migrate their personnel to the new system. AFMC personnel are migrating now, along with Pacific Air Forces and U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa, with the entire Air Force migration due to complete in mid-Feb.

The new system uses a BlackBerry AtHoc client that will integrate with current Giant Voice Systems and allow for translation of text-to-speech so notifications can also be broadcast over speaker systems.

The Air Force enterprise EMNS will be used force-wide until a Department of Defense enterprise EMNS solution is fielded and integrated across the services.

(75th Air Base Wing Public Affairs contributed to this article.)