The City of Estevan has launched a new app that aims to keep residents informed on what is happening in their area.

The app was introduced at Monday night's city council meeting by James Lainton and Jacquelyn Massey-Rounds, the city's marketing and communications manager.

The app, which is called Voyent Alert, is free to download and is designed to send alerts to residents, businesses, and visitors during critical events such as severe weather or fires. It also covers routine topics such as snow removal, water advisories, service outages, and planned maintenance such as construction projects.

"Its job is to get the information out to the citizens," Lainton said. "It allows you to add locations to points of interest that you would like to have, whether it's your house, a family member, or workplace."

The alerts from different departments will be sent out to residents based on their location, including the distance and direction from an incident. There are also city-wide alerts that will be sent to everyone, Lainton said.

For example, Lainton said an advisory was sent out Monday indicating that street sanding would continue in Estevan as long as the snow continued to fall.

City events are also covered in the app.

Lainton said the provincial alerts that come through the SaskAlert app will also come directly to the Voyent Alert app. He added that developers are also working on linking Environment Canada alerts to the Voyent Alert app.

Garbage collection notifications will not be included in the app.

You can learn more about the app on the city's website.