Morrison County Sheriff’s Office to Provide Everbridge Emergency Alerts for County Residents

Glendale, Calif. – Feb. 4, 2014 – Everbridge, the leading provider of critical communication solutions, today announced that Morrison County, Minnesota will begin using Everbridge for mass notification to citizens, fire departments, and first responders. Morrison County, home to more than 32,000 residents, plans to use Everbridge for storms, missing persons, fugitive alerts, utility failures, and other emergencies.

Previously, Morrison County used a pager system only to notify fire departments and first responders during emergencies. With the Everbridge solution, Morrison County can send broad alerts to these responders, as well as all area residents based on location or other criteria. Everbridge’s reporting features will allow Morrison County to confirm receipt of notifications, ensuring that residents are reached during an emergency.

In addition to emergency information, Morrison County may also use Everbridge to notify residents about snow removal, traffic, and other incidents in their area. Residents will be able to sign up for alerts through the county’s opt-in portal and choose which types of notifications they would like to receive. They can also select preferred delivery paths for messages, including landlines, mobile phones, text messages, and email. The ability to deliver messages through multiple channels is especially important in situations where some communication methods might be compromised; for example, during winter storms. Everbridge contact preferences can be updated at any time, enabling residents to change their preferences as their needs change.

“It would be great to see everybody in the county enrolled,” said Scott MacKissock, emergency manager for Morrison County. “If we’ve got severe weather, if we need to notify people about missing children or vulnerable adults, or if we’ve got something serious happening where we have to shelter-in-place, we’ll use Everbridge.”

County residents can read more about the program, and most importantly, sign up for the alerts, on the county’s website at www.co.morrison.mn.us. Click on the “Morrison County Citizen Alert Sign Up” tab located on the top left of the home page. Morrison County sheriff Michel Wetzel is encouraging all residents to sign up so they don’t miss important public safety information. For those without a computer, he suggests asking for help from a friend, family member, or neighbor. If they only have a landline phone and are not adding a cell phone or email, it is not necessary to enroll, because your published phone number is already loaded into the system.

Related Resources

Case Study: Morrison County

About Everbridge

Everbridge provides critical communication solutions to more than 30 million end users in all major industries and government sectors around the globe. The Everbridge solutions suite allows clients to manage emergencies, mass notifications, incident communications, and situational intelligence from a single system. Ultimately, these solutions help clients save lives, manage critical activities and improve the efficiency of daily operations. For more information about Everbridge, please see www.everbridge.com.