Dutchess County has been operating with the Text-to-911 emergency alert system for the past 11 months, the first county in the region to offer the program. Last week, Orange County became the second county to provide the service.  The message from both counties is “call if you can; text if you can’t.”  The whole idea of the program is should there be a situation where a person cannot call 911 and verbally communicate – whether it is a medical problem, a crime or a domestic incident – use the text function on your cell phone and just type in “911.” When an emergency dispatcher responds, the individual should type in a short message about the problem. Read more here: Dutchess County assesses first year of Text-to-911