By Rachel Choppin, Marketing Specialist at Alertus Technologies

It is important to have peace of mind that you, your employees, and organization are prepared to withstand and survive an earthquake. Join millions of participants on October 17th, for the 11th annual Great ShakeOut Drill. This is slated to be the largest ever earthquake drill of its kind ever attempted!

This drill is a great opportunity not only to practice a “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” drill, but also to test your Alertus Mass Notification System, to ensure your organization is prepared in the event of an earthquake. 

Here are some proposed steps you can take to prepare your organization for the drill.

Customized, Preset Templates

Using a preset alert template can reduce the time it takes to send out an alert from minutes to seconds. To prepare for this drill or an actual emergency, have your emergency dispatchers create a preset alert in your MNS that includes a specified message, audience, and device selection. When it comes time to trigger an emergency alert, your dispatcher will simply select the template and hit send. See the example template to the right to get started.

Event Monitoring

There won’t always be time for dispatchers to check weather events. That is where the Alertus System comes in. With feed integrations through Alertus ThreatWatcher™, you can automatically retrieve alerts posted to NOAA's National Weather Service Alert Feeds, general CAP, and EDXL-DE alerts to automatically warn your facility of an earthquake based on customized geographic location alerts. 

Custom Event Triggers

Custom event triggers allow users to perform configurable actions when a qualifying Alertus System event occurs. When used in conjunction with the Alertus ThreatWatcher, custom event triggers become a powerful alerting tool. Triggers can filter ThreatWatcher content based on user-defined criteria or can be set up to execute one of several predefined actions. For example, you could create a custom event trigger that would only send earthquake warnings obtained from ThreatWatcher while ignoring all other types of alerts. Likewise, alerts that aren't relevant for your organization can be completely ignored or saved for archived or auditing purposes. You have complete control over the content you want to process.

Conduct Regular Drills 

In addition to the Great ShakeOut drill, it is important to conduct monthly or yearly emergency drills for any type of emergency. This will prepare your emergency dispatchers on how to send and create alerts with your MNS, while familiarizing your audience with the language, look, and feel of your emergency alerting devices. These drills will also help your audience know how to properly receive, understand, and act when an emergency alert is activated, mitigating confusion and error. We recommend testing every month or quarterly, and to test specific scenarios to ensure your system is functioning properly and your response plans run smoothly. 

Alertus Solutions

Alertus offers an array of additional notification solutions to facilitate comprehensive alerting, including the wall-mounted Alert Beacon, LED Marquee, and mobile apps. These solutions communicate emergency alerts throughout your organization to keep staff and visitors safe. 

If you’re looking for free resources to help you or your organization better understand and facilitate emergency management, please visit Alertus Resources.