Challenges
The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, the civilian uniformed branch of the U.S. Coast Guard with 30,000 volunteers, accounts for member life safety with Everbridge Aware.
The Auxiliary is tasked by the Commandant to account for and deploy members in emergencies ranging from oil spills to hurricanes. The Auxiliary faced several challenges with its emergency communications to volunteers prior to using Everbridge:
- Time-consuming, one-by-one calling. The Auxiliary relied on manual call trees, which required numerous people making calls to volunteers one by one, a time-consuming process that often took 12 hours to complete.
- Diverse all-volunteer membership base. The Auxiliary’s more than 30,000 volunteers range in age from 17 to 97, posing a challenge in how best to reach them in emergency situations.
- Decentralized management with non-uniform standards. National staff leadership changes every two years across the organization. Additionally, each District handles communication with its members differently; the Auxiliary does not have a uniform set of standards across all Districts.
Solution
The Auxiliary needed a flexible and easy way to alert and manage its thousands of volunteers across numerous Districts and geographies. After evaluating various emergency notification platforms, the Auxiliary adopted Everbridge Aware based on the depth of its technical capabilities, security, ease of use, and ability to map to each District’s needs.
Approximately 70% of the Auxiliary’s use of the Everbridge system is for emergency situations, though several Districts use it every day for Flotilla staff meetings, routine tasking, and accountability for fires and other hazards. Every District is able to operate autonomously within the Everbridge system with information flowing from the Flotilla level all the way up to the Commandant.
Results
Faster notification
What used to take teams of six or more 12 hours to accomplish, one person can now complete in minutes to reach all members of the District.
Better accountability
The Everbridge system canvasses all voice and text contact paths in a single notification and prompts volunteers to confirm receipt. During Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, Districts were able to account for 85% of its members in 15 minutes.
Flexibility to suit procedural differences by district
The Everbridge system’s customizability allows Districts to tailor the system to match the way they work. Because the Everbridge system is easy to learn and use, even those who were reluctant to try a new technology quickly replaced older methods with Everbridge once they saw it in action.
Better messaging
The most effective messaging isn’t created in the midst of an emergency. Subject matter experts can pre-record messages for each District in the Everbridge system for tasking as well as 5-day cone and 3-day cone alerting.
Everbridge in Action: Hurricanes Gustav and Ike
The USCG Auxiliary District 8 Coastal Region (8CR) used Everbridge extensively during Hurricanes Gustav and Ike to warn members in Houston, Galveston, New Orleans, and surrounding areas of the impending danger from the storms.
Timeline
Five Days Out
In the five days leading up to the storm’s projected landfall, the District started emergency preparations, alerting Auxiliary members to the danger and accounting for their safety.
Three Days Out
At the 3-day cone, the District issued a higher alert level, providing an update on hurricane status, advising members to board up houses and take other necessary precautions, and requesting confirmation of receipt of instructions.
24 Hours Out
At the 24-hour mark before the hurricanes hit, the District used the Everbridge system for mandatory and voluntary evacuations and shelters-in-place.
The 8CR District also used the Everbridge system to deploy human and facility assets, including watch standers, EOC/IMT, and surface, air, radio, and land patrol facilities. This tasking included notifying and requesting help from members with specific skill sets and moving them throughout area according to need. Approximately 92% of all members were accounted for using the Everbridge system in a short time, a significantly higher percentage than the District had been able to confirm previously by calling one by one.
