Mt. Lebanon’s emergency siren—a piece of history that dates back to the days of civil defense and bomb shelters—has been removed permanently from atop the municipal building. For more than half a century, the siren was the community signal for an emergency, and to turn on the radio or the television for more information.

Recently, Mt. Lebanon has made giant technical strides. The municipality now offers LeboALERT, a free web-based emergency and non-emergency notification system. In the case of emergency, every resident will get a pre-recorded phone message, using a list provided by Verizon specifically for that purpose—if your life is in danger, you’ll hear from the municipality whether you want to or not. But the non-emergency LeboALERTS, which you can easily subscribe to online, allow you to receive the same public safety information via your cell phone or email, so if you’re out and about, you can get the messages on the fly.

You can choose to receive LeboALERTs in 13 different categories, including traffic, refuse collection, cancellations and closures, magazine updates, special events and library news. You can sign up for as many alerts as you want, and you can change your preferences regularly.

If you have any trouble registering for this free service, call the public information office at 412-343-3407, and we’ll walk you through it.

There are sirens atop several elementary school that are available for use, if necessary.