Title
Receive a report from Office of Emergency Services on the status of the Alert Monterey Emergency Notification System and the community outreach efforts to date.
Report
RECOMMENDATION:
It is recommended that the Board of Supervisors receive a report from Office of Emergency Services on the status of the Alert Monterey Emergency Notification System and the community outreach efforts to date.
SUMMARY:
This report describes the activities by the Office of Emergency Services and Emergency Communications Department to increase the capacity of our new emergency alerting platform Everbridge to better inform residents of emergency situations. The new web based system allows citizens to receive notifications on their cell phones, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone system, and email and text messages. Community outreach including a countywide test of the alerting system for opt-in residents has generated moderate growth in registered residents. An aggressive community outreach program is underway to improve the capacity to reach all of our residents.
DISCUSSION:
In October 2013, the County and Emergency Communications Department transitioned to a new emergency notification system with our current vendor, Everbridge. Our relationship with Everbridge brought much more capacity to inform residents of emergency situations, allowing people to receive notifications on their cell phones, through email and text message, and on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems. The new system also allowed for residents to select multiple areas throughout the county to "subscribe" to, receiving any and all messages that are launched that concern any of their areas of interest. These new features expanded on the old models of alerting and allowed people to be more proactive and in control of what information that they receive. We imported 4,421 contacts to our resident opt-in database. These numbers had previously been registered with 21st Century Communications over the last 6 years.
In the last 16 months, we have seen continued growth of the system database with 2,087 new sign-ups, bringing the total to 6,508 residents. During this timeframe, we have also seen large spikes brought on by three key events -the Pfeiffer Fire, our National Preparedness Month 2014 campaign, "In the KNOW, READY to GO", which included a system test to all registered users, and finally the storm systems that moved through Monterey County in December and January.
Although we have seen approx. 30% increase in new sign-ups, we are still far below national standards of 5 -10% of population. An aggressive campaign will be underway in 2015 in partnership with our local cities, to promote Opt-In registration. Outreach strategies include improving Spanish language instructions; utilizing community centers; using libraries to act as "force multipliers"; increasing public service announcements and promotional materials; and thinking beyond emergency alerting where communities can provide messages in a self-subscription format for local events and non-emergency activities.
Information on the current Monterey County ALERT MONTEREY Community Outreach is included in Exhibit A.
OTHER AGENCY INVOLVEMENT:
External Partners: Cities of Seaside; Carmel By the Sea; Pacific Grove; Monterey; Salinas; Marina; Sand City; Del Ray Oaks; Gonzales; Soledad; Greenfield; King City; fire districts.
Internal Departments/Agencies: Office of Emergency Services; Emergency Communications Department; CAO Intergovernmental and Legislative Affairs.
FINANCING:
There is no impact to the general fund related to receipt of this report.
Prepared by:
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Sherrie L. Collins Emergency Services Manager
Approved by:
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Nicholas E. Chiulos Assistant CAO
Attachment: Exhibit A) Alert Monterey Summary Report