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Preparedness

Communications

Last reviewed: 10 November 2026

How a household in Charleston, Dorchester, or Berkeley County can receive official alerts — including CHSAlerts, Dorchester Smart911, and Wireless Emergency Alerts — and stay in touch if cell networks are congested.

In an emergency, the most important messages are official ones: evacuate, stay home, a flood warning, a boil-water notice, a road closure. Your plan should assume that cell service will be slow or down, that the home internet will die with the power, and that a phone with a dead battery is just a dark piece of glass.

How official alerts reach you

Use more than one channel. They overlap on purpose.

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are short messages from authorized agencies to compatible phones in an affected area. They can sound a loud tone even if the phone is on silent. You do not sign up. If you are driving, stop in a safe, legal place before you read the message. Do what the alert says.

The Emergency Alert System (EAS) breaks into local radio and television with the same class of official warnings.

NOAA Weather Radio is a dedicated radio service from the National Weather Service. A tone-alert weather radio, on batteries or a crank, will keep working when the TV and Wi-Fi do not. Program it for the NWS Charleston warning area, which includes Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester Counties, and test it. NWS Charleston is the forecast office for this region: weather.gov/chs.

CHSAlerts (Charleston County). This is the county’s opt-in mass-notification system (text, phone call, or email) for evacuations, severe weather, road closures, and other local emergencies. Sign up at the official registration page: https://member.everbridge.net/453003085611698/ov. That is the “sign up” link in Charleston County Emergency Management’s 3 September 2026 news release and on the City of Charleston Alerts and Notifications page. Include the address you want covered.

Berkeley County. Enable Wireless Emergency Alerts, and follow Berkeley County Emergency Management. For general county news and email alerts, use the OneBerkeley Portal. Contacts and other local details are on Charleston, Dorchester, Berkeley, and South Carolina resources. No official text-to-shortcode option was published on the official pages opened on 10 November 2026.

Dorchester County Emergency Alerts (Smart911). Sign up at https://www.smart911.com/smart911/ref/reg.action?pa=dorchestercountysc. The official page says you pick where and how you are reached, including text message. No official text-to-shortcode option was published on the official pages opened this turn.

Office phones, utility numbers, and other local details for all three counties, plus alert sign-up steps for Charleston and Dorchester, are on Charleston, Dorchester, Berkeley, and South Carolina resources. Sign up where those systems are available, and consider a workplace or second-home address if you spend a lot of time there.

SCEMD offers the official South Carolina Emergency Manager app, with zone maps, a personal plan, and state alerts. The state hurricane hub is hurricane.sc.

The FEMA app can deliver National Weather Service alerts for up to five U.S. locations.

Local radio stations remain important after a storm, which is why a simple AM/FM radio still belongs in the house kit. For a short overview of amateur radio, GMRS, FRS, and Meshtastic, including U.S. licensing notes, see Ham radio, GMRS, and Meshtastic.

A household communication plan

Ready.gov planning questions are the right ones. Write down, on paper, in the family plan:

  • A primary out-of-area contact
  • A local meeting place near home, and a second meeting place outside the neighborhood
  • School and workplace pickup rules
  • Phone numbers for family, neighbors, doctors, insurance, the veterinarian, and utilities

Text messages and social-media check-ins often get through when a voice call cannot. After a disaster, keep voice calls short and save them for true emergencies so networks stay usable for 911.

If the network is down, go to the meeting place at the time you agreed. Agree who will check on whom — a next-door neighbor who lives alone, a relative across town — and how that check happens if phones are down.

Power for communications

Keep power banks charged, with a cable for every phone in the household. Capacity and runtime examples are on Power and lighting. A car charger helps if you can use the vehicle safely and have fuel, but a running car in a closed garage is a carbon monoxide hazard.

Landline phones that need house power (most modern ones) will not work in an outage. Do not assume a “home phone” is a backup unless you have checked how it is powered.

When card payments and the internet are down

Have some cash in small bills, because card terminals and ATMs may be offline. Keep a paper map of the area. Copies of key documents belong in a waterproof pouch — see Documents and money.

Sources & further reading