"Good Morning.  This is Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

"When I was a kid, everyone talked about how Paul Revere rode through our town on horseback shouting his famous warning about the approach of the British troops.  Today, thankfully, we live in a world with more sophisticated means of communication: email, cell phones, television, radio. And our administration is committed to using this technology to ensure that all New Yorkers stay informed - whether it's something as widespread as a blizzard or as local as a water main break.

"In fact, starting tomorrow, we are going to test an innovative new system that could revolutionize the way we get information out to the public during emergencies.  It's called 'Notify NYC,' and it will deliver neighborhood-specific emergency alerts directly to New Yorkers by e-mail messages, text messages, and automated telephone calls - like those used to warn Californians during the wildfires there earlier this year.

"The messages will come in two types:  There will be 'Alerts,' which will tell residents exactly what to do in the event of a chemical spill, a severe flood, or other serious emergency. And there will be 'Notifications,' which will be intended to be purely informational, such as in the event of a localized power outage.

"Over the next six months we will be testing this system in four parts of the city - each chosen because they pose various kinds of challenges.  That includes:  Lower Manhattan - because of the health and safety issues associated with the rebuilding of the World Trade Center; the Rockaways - which has a history of flooding from coastal storms; Southwest Staten Island - another vulnerable coastal community neighbored by several industrial facilities; and the Northeast Bronx - because it gives us the chance to study the effectiveness of the program in an area that has both high-rise buildings and single-family homes.

"Notify NYC, which fulfills a promise I made during my campaign for re-election, is the product of a collaboration among a number of City agencies.  To sign up, just log on to the program's website at www.nyc.gov and enter your contact information.  All personal details will be kept confidential and anyone can sign up for the service, regardless of where you live or work.  For now, though, emergency alerts and notifications will be limited to events that directly affect our four trial areas.  Depending on the pilot program's success, we hope to expand it to other parts of the city.

"Making sure the nation's safest big city can respond quickly to any emergency is one of our most important jobs - and one we take very seriously.  That's why we continue to modernize our police and fire departments and why we continue to improve our sophisticated bio-monitoring system which is always on the lookout for disease outbreaks.  Now we're giving the public the information they need as well, so that when disaster strikes, New Yorkers never have a doubt about what has happened and what they should do.

"This is Mayor Mike Bloomberg.  Thanks for listening."