Emergency Notification and Critical Incident Management
AlertFind in Vernon, CT
9-1-1 Magazine
April, 2008 – Vernon, CT is a fast growing suburb of Hartford with over 35,000 citizens and a bevy of visitors eager to soak up some of the town’s New England charm. Ensuring the safety of the community and its visitors is the most important task for first responders and public safety officials in Vernon.
Bisected by Interstate 84, highway emergencies are a concern for the Town of Vernon. In addition, Vernon faces common emergencies related to severe weather conditions, power outages and medical situations.
Having experienced crisis teams is an important element of emergency management and Vernon boasts an impressive group of first responders, including the largest volunteer fire department in the state. Its Office of Emergency Management is led by Michael Purcaro. Primarily responsible for coordinating and supporting the response to emergencies that occur within the Town of Vernon, Purcaro is also an active member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s National Disaster Medical System and an executive board member of the Connecticut Emergency Management Association.
In order to help enable Vernon’s first responders to communicate effectively and quickly respond to any crisis, the town utilizes AlertFind. This automated, two-way tool finds people, delivers messages, and gathers information in real-time. When a crisis occurs, Purcaro uses AlertFind to communicate with emergency response teams over a dozen different devices with user specified escalation rules. AlertFind also enables Purcaro to know when the messages have been received so he can make important decisions about the towns’ response to emergencies.
Prior to deploying AlertFind, Purcaro had to manually call each person on the emergency response team when an incident occurred. For example, a recent outage left over half the town’s residents without power. Now, rather than go through the roster to call Fire, Police, EMS and elected town officials to try to let them know the status, Purcaro simply developed a quick alert and sent important information to all the appropriate people immediately.
“AlertFind is an important component of Vernon’s emergency management strategy,” explained Purcaro. “Making sure the right individuals have received and confirmed our emergency notifications saves time, which is critical in a crisis. Plus, the system is flexible, so I can issue an alert remotely without having to be on site at the town’s emergency operations center.”
The ability to reach any user, anywhere, at any time was helpful for Vernon as hours and schedules for the town’s responders are not always regular or similar. Since the tool is only as good as the information it contains, AlertFind also directly imports information from a wide variety of directory, human resources and administrative systems. In addition, users can be automatically polled to update contact information, availability and escalation preferences.
Vernon was the first town in the state of Connecticut to utilize an automated emergency notification system. Town officials decided to make this investment for the good of the community, despite the fact that the town had to fund the initiative. This was made easier because AlertFind, is an on-demand service, so the costs for deploying and operating the solution are known upfront with no ongoing investment required.
