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Getting Started

Last updated on
3 October 2026

Sentinel shows people the flood zone, active emergency alerts and what to do for a location, and emails the people who sign up when an emergency reaches them. This page gets it running on your site.

Sentinel is not an alerting system. It only reaches people who visit your site or signed up for email, and it depends on cron and email delivery. It adds to Wireless Emergency Alerts and NOAA Weather Radio; it doesn't replace them. Every page and email shows a disclaimer saying so.

1. Install

composer require drupal/sentinel, then drush en sentinel. Sentinel needs Drupal 10.3 or later and no other modules. It covers the United States.

2. Run cron every minute

Sentinel fetches new FEMA alerts on cron: every 5 minutes normally, and every minute during an emergency. Emails are also sent on cron. Drupal's built-in "automated cron" only runs when people visit, which is too slow, so run cron from the server:

* * * * * cd /path/to/site && vendor/bin/drush --uri=https://example.com cron

Pass --uri with your site's address so links in emails point to your site. Sentinel decides on each run whether a fetch is due, so running cron every minute costs almost nothing when it isn't.

The status report (Reports » Status report) shows when alerts were last fetched and warns if they stop updating.

3. Make sure email gets delivered

Alert emails are only useful if they arrive. Send through a proper mail service: an SMTP module with your organization's mail server, or a transactional email service. Set the site email address (Configuration » Basic site settings) to an address on a domain that service is allowed to send for.

4. Settings

Go to Configuration » System » Sentinel (/admin/config/system/sentinel):

  • Contact email: the National Weather Service asks every app to include a contact address in its requests. Use a shared inbox, not a personal one.
  • Fetch alerts now: click it once to load the current alerts and check the site can reach FEMA.
  • Minutes between fetches, normally and during an emergency.
  • Lowest severity shown: flood warnings are always shown.
  • Emails to subscribers: whether to email updates and the all clear.
  • Show: which sections an assessment includes: place, flood zone, alerts, what to do, disaster declarations, earthquakes.
  • Disclaimer: shown on every assessment and in every email.

5. Place the blocks

In Structure » Block layout, under the Sentinel category:

Block Use it for
Sentinel: your location A "Am I safe?" page. Visitors click Check my location; the browser asks permission first.
Sentinel: alerts for a place A fixed address, such as city hall or a campus. Shown to everyone without asking for their location.
Sentinel: email alert sign-up Your home page, footer or an "Emergency alerts" page.
Sentinel: missing and endangered persons AMBER, Blue and missing person alerts for your county or state.

The location block needs HTTPS: browsers only share location with secure sites.

6. Check it

drush sentinel:check "901 Bagby St, Houston, TX"

This prints the place, flood zone, warning level and active alerts for any US address or LATITUDE,LONGITUDE, using the same code as the blocks.

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