High River's Director of Emergency Management is urging residents to check their status on the emergency alert system.

Carly Benson says the town has just under 5,000 residents signed up, but during last week's test, some were sent a message to confirm they'd gotten the test and it comes back as "undeliverable"

"We're trying to figure out what that undeliverable is and what we have found, in a lot of cases, is it's because people disconnected their phone line or they got a new cell phone, so the number is out of service," she says. "It has an impact on our system because it takes time for the system to call all those numbers, so if we can just get the public's help cleaning up their data, just sign into High River Alert just once this month and make sure all the phone numbers in there are exactly how to reach you, that would help us out a lot."

Councillor Emile Blokland said when he got the alert he was busy and since he knew it was just a test he hung up right away. Benson says that's fine, but they'd like it if, when people get the alert they confirm they got it, if they're asked to do so.

She says 54 per cent of the calls were not confirmed, which is higher than the rate during January's test.