More than 4,300 students, faculty and staff signed up for Virginia Tech's new multi-method emergency alert system this past week, the first time the service was offered online.

The subscription-based system is one of the newest security updates at Tech after the April 16 shootings and will send emergency alerts to phones, e-mails and instant-message addresses of people who register. People choose how they want to be notified.

Tech began looking at such a system after an escaped prisoner interrupted the start of the fall semester. On Aug. 21, the first day of classes, administrators canceled classes and closed campus while authorities searched for William Morva, who was accused of shooting and killing a sheriff's deputy and a security guard at Montgomery Regional Hospital and was believed to be in hiding near campus.

The university was in the process of choosing a vendor for the system when the April 16 shootings left 33 people dead.

The sign-up period began July 2, a week before freshman orientation, which gets under way today. The university expects more than 5,000 students to convene on campus throughout the next two weeks -- about 400 each day.

"Of course, this is just the beginning," Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said. He said he expects more people will sign up as incoming students learn more about campus and as upperclassmen return from summer break.

Orientation, an annual freshman tradition, allows incoming students one of their first peeks at undergraduate life. Administrators prefer that freshmen attend, but it is not required. Those who do attend stay in dorms, register for classes and have a chance to air any last-minute concerns or questions.

The orientation staff is ready, said director Rick Sparks, but they aren't expecting a deluge of questions regarding the shootings. In late June, Tech hosted orientation for more than 500 transfer students. They and their parents had few queries about April 16.

"We didn't get very many questions at all. ... They were real basic," Sparks said. He said he does expect the freshmen to have more college-specific questions than transfers who have already been to a college or university.

So just in case, freshman orientation will include an information session on safety, which brings in police officers and legal services.

Sparks said his staff will answer questions anytime, but he said the police sessions will be the best time to have questions answered fully.

Sparks, who hosted a moment of silence during the opening sessions of both freshman and transfer orientations, said he understands that people need to recognize the tragedy.

"We felt like we needed to acknowledge and kind of recognize the shootings during orientation, but we also didn't want it to be a focal point," he said. "We thought [the moment of silence] was a way to be respectful and less intrusive to students."

Tech is one of hundreds of colleges across the country promoting new emergency alert systems designed to notify the campus community immediately in case of an emergency.

In Southwest Virginia, Ferrum College has its alert system in place. It will send alerts through any communication form the subscriber requests.

Other schools, such as Hollins University, Virginia Western Community College and Roanoke College, are assessing their needs.

Radford University President Penelope Kyle has promised to have an emergency alert system, complete with on-campus audio alert, in place when classes start.

Administrators have spent the summer mulling their options and have narrowed a selection of eight companies down to three, said Dennie Templeton, Radford's director of distance education.

The school also is adding monitors to student common areas that will broadcast emergency news.

Colleges aren't the only ones in on the multi-platform alerts. For the past five years, the town of Blacksburg has offered an alert system to which residents, or anyone with an interest in the town, can subscribe.

On April 16, the town updated that e-mail-, fax- and telephone-alert system regularly with links to Virginia Tech updates, said communications director Heather Brown.

Brown said she would love to tap into the alert system at Tech for updates, but that system is closed to anyone but faculty, staff and students.

The Blacksburg Alert system could expand to include text messaging or instant messages soon, she said. The town is looking at its own options.

"We're all trying to perform a public service in any way we can," Brown said.