As Kilauea eruption subsides, text alerts kept Hawaiians informed while they braced for Hurricane Lane
BURLINGTON, Mass. – August 27, 2018 – As Hurricane Lane approached the Hawaiian Islands, becoming the first major hurricane to threaten landfall in the state in a quarter century, residents and visitors depended on the latest information on the storm’s impact. Much of that information was provided by Everbridge (NASDAQ: EVBG), the global leader in critical event management software designed to help keep people safe and businesses running. The Hawaii Police Department relied on Everbridge text alerts to keep islanders apprised of the latest on Hurricane Lane, having urged locals and tourists to text LANE to 888777 for storm alerts. The Maui Emergency Management Agency is also leveraging Everbridge, having instructed residents to text MAUI to 888777 to receive emergency notifications.
“Hurricane Lane has already dumped over a foot of rain on the Big Island,” explained Alan Richmond, Public Relations Liaison with the Hawaii Police Department, as the storm approached last week. “With up to 30 inches expected, landslides and flooding are a major concern. We want to make sure everyone is up to date on the latest conditions around the island, and text alerts are the most direct way of reaching people quickly and reliably.”
Prior to Hurricane Lane, Hawaii was faced with another natural disaster – the eruption of the Kilauea volcano, which opened cracks on the Island and spewed lava and toxic gas into the air. For months, the Hawaii Police Department had sent alerts regarding evacuations, traffic advisories, and other emergency information by using keyword LAVA to alert residents and visitors via the Everbridge platform.
“When a critical event such as a hurricane or wildfire strikes, communication between emergency managers, emergency responders, search and rescue teams, security professionals and the general population is vital to saving lives,” said Jaime Ellertson, CEO, Everbridge. “Our team of critical event management experts is dedicated to providing our customers with the right tools, best practices and functionality to ensure preparedness, and to always maximize response and safety efforts.”
As Hawaii took action to keep people on the island informed, thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean firefighters in California were battling the Ferguson and Mendocino-Complex fires and also relied on Everbridge to keep residents safe. Everbridge’s scalable, easy-to-use and quick-to-deploy platform provides the speed and reliability for organizations to accurately reach desired end users.
Last year’s hurricane season, for example, broke numerous records for rainfall, cost, and number of powerful storms. Click
here to watch a webinar on lessons learned, response plan improvements, and technological advancements for 2018 and beyond. The Everbridge Customer Success team has also released the following critical event management and emergency messaging recommendations, guidelines and tips that organizations should incorporate into their hurricane readiness and preparedness plans:
- Confirm System Access: Make sure that all users can log into your critical communications system, and that they have the right access to send notifications. Also, ensure that former employees are removed from your system and that access for users on leave is disabled.
- Message Construction: In an emergency, messages should be clear and concise. It is recommended that you adhere to the 3-3-30 guideline (a message should contain no more than 3 main points, in 3 short sentences, using fewer than 30 words).
- Contact Data Quality: The start of hurricane season is the right time to remind citizens to sign up for your community messages. When a resident subscribes, it supports a more complete and accurate profile of that person, including home phone, mobile phone, SMS, email, and locations that are important to them.
- Perform Testing and Training: To support adoption for recipients and ease of access for message senders, you will want to send test messages to maintain familiarity with the system and to practice message building. Use a severe weather event as an opportunity to provide your contacts (residents and/or employees, customers, and other stakeholders) with preparedness information, similar to information found at https://ready.gov.
- FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS): During a severe weather emergency, it’s extremely helpful to have access to IPAWS, so if infrastructure fails and land lines are not an option, you know you can at least get a one-way message to residents’ mobile devices, or anyone near the event.
- Share the URL for the Local Emergency Alert Opt-in Page: Use the news, radio, social media and printed materials to actively promote your system to the public.
- Tracking the Safety of Care-Dependent Residents: During a hurricane, your care-dependent citizens are at an elevated risk. They may not be able to evacuate and may need to stay close to treatment. Coordinate regularly with your health department to understand where your at-risk population is located, how they can be reached and what their special needs may be.
About Everbridge
Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG) is a global software company that provides enterprise software applications that automate and accelerate organizations’ operational response to critical events in order to keep people safe and businesses running. During public safety threats such as active shooter situations, terrorist attacks or severe weather conditions, as well as critical business events including IT outages, cyber-attacks or other incidents such as product recalls or supply-chain interruptions, over 4,000 global customers rely on the company’s Critical Event Management Platform to quickly and reliably aggregate and assess threat data, locate people at risk and responders able to assist, automate the execution of pre-defined communications processes through the secure delivery to over 100 different communication devices, and track progress on executing response plans. The company’s platform sent over 2 billion messages in 2017 and offers the ability to reach over 500 million people in more than 200 countries and territories, including the entire mobile populations on a country-wide scale in Sweden, the Netherlands, the Bahamas, Singapore, Greece, Cambodia, and a number of the largest states in India. The company’s critical communications and enterprise safety applications include Mass Notification, Incident Management, Safety Connection™, IT Alerting, Visual Command Center®, Crisis Commander®, Community Engagement™ and Secure Messaging. Everbridge serves 9 of the 10 largest U.S. cities, 8 of the 10 largest U.S.-based investment banks, all 25 of the 25 busiest North American airports, six of the 10 largest global consulting firms, six of the 10 largest global auto makers, all four of the largest global accounting firms, four of the 10 largest U.S.-based health care providers and four of the 10 largest U.S.-based health insurers. Everbridge is based in Boston and Los Angeles with additional offices in Lansing, San Francisco, Beijing, Kolkata, London, Oslo and Stockholm. For more information, visit
www.everbridge.com, read the company
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Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited to, statements regarding the anticipated opportunity and trends for growth in our critical communications and enterprise safety applications and our overall business, our market opportunity, our expectations regarding sales of our products, and our goal to maintain market leadership and extend the markets in which we compete for customers. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and were based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections as well as the beliefs and assumptions of management. Words such as “expect,” “anticipate,” “should,” “believe,” “target,” “project,” “goals,” “estimate,” “potential,” “predict,” “may,” “will,” “could,” “intend,” variations of these terms or the negative of these terms and similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which involve factors or circumstances that are beyond our control. Our actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including but not limited to: the ability of our products and services to perform as intended and meet our customers’ expectations; our ability to attract new customers and retain and increase sales to existing customers; our ability to increase sales of our Mass Notification application and/or ability to increase sales of our other applications; developments in the market for targeted and contextually relevant critical communications or the associated regulatory environment; our estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth may prove to be inaccurate; we have not been profitable on a consistent basis historically and may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future; the lengthy and unpredictable sales cycles for new customers; nature of our business exposes us to inherent liability risks; our ability to attract, integrate and retain qualified personnel; our ability to successfully integrate businesses and assets that we may acquire; our ability to maintain successful relationships with our channel partners and technology partners; our ability to manage our growth effectively; our ability to respond to competitive pressures; potential liability related to privacy and security of personally identifiable information; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights, and the other risks detailed in our risk factors discussed in filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including but not limited to our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017 filed with the SEC on March 12, 2018. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent our views as of the date of this press release. We undertake no intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.
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Media Contacts:
Jeff Young
Everbridge
jeff.young@everbridge.com
781-859-4116
Jim Gatta
Everbridge
jim.gatta@everbridge.com
215-290-3799
