City of Glendale
Lt. Kim Lardie, City of Glendale, California
Lieutenant Kim Lardie hadn’t been trained yet on the Everbridge SmartGISTM system when a wildfire broke out in a residential area of Glendale, a city of 200,000 residents. But that didn’t stop her. Lardie, who runs the City of Glendale’s police dispatch center, overheard responders discussing door-to-door evacuations, reporting back on whether residents were voluntarily evacuating or staying in their residences, and coordinating sending ambulances – all critical, but time-consuming communication activities that pulled responders away from dealing with the fire itself. Lardie placed an urgent call to Everbridge: “We have a fire and need your help now.” Everbridge’s response was immediate.
Everbridge Lends a Helping Hand During a Wildfire
Lardie was still mid-implementation with the Everbridge emergency notification system when a brush fire broke out along the Glendale-Los Angeles border on August 4, 2009, threatening hillside homes, snarling freeway traffic, and prompting evacuations. Despite having no training on the system, Lardie knew she could use the Everbridge system to notify residents quickly and help alleviate her team’s workload so they could focus on dealing with the fire. She contacted Everbridge Client Care for urgent help sending the notification. Lardie described the geographic area affected over the phone to Everbridge. Together, Lardie and Everbridge identified residents in the affected canyon area, which had only one road in and out, and launched a notification advising those residents to evacuate their homes and report to the designated emergency evacuation site.
“Glendale’s chief of police was extremely impressed that Everbridge responded so quickly to the city’s request for help. Everbridge got the message launched immediately so the public got the information they needed to stay safe.”
– Lt. Kim Lardie, Communications Manager, City of Glendale
Firefighters from five agencies were able to bring the blaze under control by early evening, prompting an all-clear advisory message launched by Everbridge with direction from Lardie.
Message - August 4, 2009, 5:46 pm
This is the Glendale Police Department. You are being advised to evacuate your home due to a fire in the area of the 134 freeway and the 2 freeway. The emergency evacuation site is the Glendale Civic Auditorium. If you need emergency assistance due to a medical condition and are unable to evacuate, call 9-1-1.
Message - August 4, 2009, 6:40 pm
The Fire Department has reported that they have contained the fire. No homes are in immediate threat at this time. The Fire Department is not asking for evacuations but asks that you be prepared to leave if the situation changes. A phone notification will be done if there is a change in the situation. Thank you for your cooperation.
Beyond Emergencies
Usage of the Everbridge system won’t stop at emergencies. Lardie is expanding the system to include internal notification for all police officers and has already tested the system with SWAT personnel and the crisis negotiation team. Currently, the Glendale Police Department uses a pager system to contact officers. When a major incident occurs, Dispatch pages officers who then call in to report estimated arrival times. Early-morning incidents especially tax resources. Using polling notifications, officers can specify when they will report in so Lardie has a log of who is coming and who is unavailable without pulling resources away to answer phones.
Lardie is moving other manual processes to the Everbridge system. The City of Glendale recently released a new police manual that needed to be distributed to all 450 police employees. As employees are accountable for all content and changes, Lardie needs to have a record that employees received the manual. Previously, the department used to keep a manual list with checkmarks by the names of employees when they received the manual. Using Everbridge, employees click to confirm receipt, giving Lardie a comprehensive audit trail. She was also able to rebroadcast to the non-compliance list and found several errors in contact data that she was able to correct in the department’s records.
The City of Glendale Water & Power will use the Everbridge system for incidents like power outages and water line breaks, which typically result in a flood of calls to 9-1-1, as well as proactive customer communications, including power or water restoration times, planned outages, and more. Currently, these types of customer communications consist of going door to door and posting flyers, requiring a significant amount of manpower. Everbridge will streamline that process and substantially reduce the hours required to notify customers.
Peer-to-Peer: Kim’s Advice
- Don’t limit use of the Everbridge system to just emergencies. There are many areas within the city—whether communicating externally to residents and customers or to internal teams—where you can save time, money, or headaches by using Everbridge. Additionally, if you are more familiar with using the system, it will be that much easier in an emergency.
- Everbridge’s text-to-speech engine is excellent and a great alternative when you aren’t able to record a message, but test whether using a live voice makes a difference in prompting people to take the desired behavior. Using a live voice can add tremendous credibility depending on the message and audience.
