Spanish speakers in Alachua County can now register to receive emergency alerts in their native language via text or Facebook.
Users who text ALACHUAESP to 888-777 will receive Spanish-language messages during disasters such as hurricanes. Additional emergency information will be posted on the County’s dedicated Spanish-language Facebook page: Alachua County Ready en Español.
Alachua County Emergency Management piloted the text message system last hurricane season.
Approximately 40 users signed up during the trial, according to Gracia Fernández, Immigrant and Language Services Coordinator for the County.
Users received emergency alerts including wind advisories, flood notices and tornado watches throughout the above-average hurricane season.
Text messages came through Everbridge, the same platform used for English-language alerts. The Florida Division of Emergency Management pays for each county’s subscription to Everbridge, or a similar service.
Most counties in north central Florida rely on the system’s automatic translations to provide Spanish-language messages, but Fernández interprets them by hand.
“I personally am not comfortable using auto translations for emergency messaging,” said Jen Grice, Director of Emergency Management for Alachua County. “I think whenever you’re dealing with safety issues, it’s very important to have an actual living, breathing human who knows the language fluently to make sure that what is going out is correct.”
That need became apparent last hurricane season, when some users’ devices automatically translated Spanish-language emergency management Facebook content back into English.
A few errors were minor, such as changing “Newberry Road” to “Newberry Street” since the same word is used for both in Spanish.
“On one occasion it said something about encouraging people to go outside when it was time to shelter in place,” Fernández said, prompting emergency managers to create separate English and Spanish-language pages.
“We’ve tried to take in any of the feedback we’ve gotten and implement it immediately,” Fernández said.
Alachua County announced the Spanish-language text platform and Facebook page to the public last week. About 58 users have signed up. Fernández aims to increase the number to 200 people by the end of the year.
“When we get closer to hurricane season, we’re going to really continue to push [those resources],” Grice said. She noted that signups spike as disasters approach, “But we certainly do whatever we can to get that information to people beforehand as well.”
Fernández said she plans to continue leveraging relationships with local nonprofits and faith organizations to spread the word and help foster local government’s relationship with its most vulnerable populations.
“This is amazing, this interpretation,” said Adriana Menéndez, Assistant Director of the Gainesville-based Rural Women’s Health Project.
The multilingual communities with which Menéndez works were some of the first to test Alachua County’s system. But while Menéndez could refer Alachua-area residents to the Facebook page and text service, many of her clients from other counties in north central Florida had fewer resources.
Only one county in north central Florida, Levy, staffed a certified interpreter in the emergency management office full-time as of fall 2024. Marion, Levy and now Alachua County are the only three in north central Florida to have dedicated Spanish-language Facebook pages for emergency situations.
Menéndez hopes other counties will follow Alachua County’s example and “acknowledge that the population that they are serving is not only English speakers.”
Around 17.5% of Alachua County residents speak a language other than English at home, according to 2023 census data. Spanish accounts for about half of this share, followed by Hindi, Vietnamese and French.
“You cannot expect for people to have vital information if the information that you are providing is not in a language that they speak,” Menéndez said.
Alachua County doesn’t currently have any plans to expand text message or Facebook offerings to additional languages.
“We’re really focusing on our number one language after English,” Grice said, “making sure that we do a good job translating all of our Spanish alerts.”
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