BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG), a global software company that provides critical communications and enterprise safety applications to help keep people safe and businesses running, supported communities and businesses across Florida and throughout the southeastern United States as catastrophic Category 4 Hurricane Matthew wreaked havoc over the weekend of October 7-9th.
As residents were forced to evacuate their homes and counter unprecedented rainfall, wind, power outages, road closures and other incidents, the Everbridge critical communications system was used by over 900 counties, cities, businesses, transportation authorities and hospitals in the southeastern United States to send millions of messages over the course of the weekend. In addition, global organizations leveraged the Everbridge platform to communicate effectively to impacted employees and customers located in the path of the storm.
“With Hurricane Matthew, it was critical to our organization that we communicated decisive and actionable emergency information to our customers,” said Randy Sheltra, SSH, VP Safety, Loomis Armored US. “The Everbridge platform enabled us to easily deliver critical alerts to these customers across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, helping to ensure their safety and awareness of the most up-to-date emergency information throughout the course of the storm.”
In Florida, the statewide emergency notification program, AlertFlorida, is powered by Everbridge. During the lead-up to Hurricane Matthew, and throughout the course of the storm, the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) leveraged Everbridge’s system for internal communications between members of the State Emergency Response Team (SERT), as well as for the distribution of public notifications to millions of residents in the state, providing them with critical alerts and evacuation orders. The FDEM also embedded an Everbridge employee in the State Emergency Operations Center for five days to support the state and counties during the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew.
The SERT also utilized Everbridge’s Community Engagement™ application to establish the keyword, FLPREPARES, and encourage residents, first responders and family members to sign up for alerts by texting the phrase to 888-777. This very simple “opt in” method provided the state with an additional way to help ensure that their critical messages were being received. After launching the keyword and promoting it during Governor Rick Scott’s press conferences on Thursday, October 6, the state received more than 350,000 opt-ins in less than 24 hours. In his press conference regarding the storm, Governor Scott commented that the alerts “can save your life.”
“Our customers demonstrated exceptional preparedness and resiliency during Hurricane Matthew. We are proud to have worked with the State of Florida and many other communities and organizations in a programmatic way to help them inform and instruct their citizens and employees,” said Jaime Ellertson, CEO, Everbridge. “Time and again we see that having multiple means of engagement is crucial to ensuring that critical safety communications are received, and Hurricane Matthew was no exception.”
Communities and organizations across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina continue to utilize the Everbridge suite in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew. The system’s multiple methods for delivering critical communications are designed to ensure performance in the event that power outages or overloaded phone lines compromise an individual communication path.
For continued Hurricane Matthew recovery updates and to receive the latest information and updates from the Florida State Emergency Response Team, residents and visitors can text the keyword FLRECOVERS to 888-777 and business owners can text FLBIZRECOVER to 888-777. Current AlertFlorida and other Everbridge/Nixle® subscribers in the affected areas will continue to receive their regular local alerts and can choose to opt-in to FLRECOVERS for Hurricane Matthew specific information.
About Everbridge
Everbridge,
Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG), is a global software company that provides critical
communications and enterprise safety applications that enable customers
to automate and accelerate the process of keeping people safe and
businesses running during critical events. During public safety threats
such as active shooter situations, terrorist attacks or severe weather
conditions, as well as critical business events such as IT outages or
cyber incidents, over 3,000 global customers rely on the company’s
SaaS-based platform to quickly and reliably construct and deliver
contextual notifications to millions of people at one time. The
company’s platform sent over 1 billion messages in 2015, and offers the
ability to reach more than 200 countries and territories with secure
delivery to over 100 different communication devices. The company’s
critical communications and enterprise safety applications include Mass
Notification, Incident Management, IT Alerting, Safety Connection™,
Community Engagement™, Secure Messaging and Internet of Things, and are
easy-to-use and deploy, secure, highly scalable and reliable. Everbridge
serves 8 of the 10 largest U.S. cities, 8 of the 10 largest U.S.-based
investment banks, all four of the largest global accounting firms, 24 of
the 25 busiest North American airports and 6 of the 10 largest global
automakers. Everbridge is based in Boston and Los Angeles with
additional offices in San Francisco, Beijing and London. For more
information, visit www.everbridge.com,
read the company blog, http://www.everbridge.com/blog,
and follow on Twitter
and Facebook.
