Lake County 911 Authority institutes 5-minute Everbridge notification SOP for major incidents

Staff told the authority they have created an extensive set of Everbridge templates and an internal SOP to speed incident notification and escalation.

Sarah said she developed templates covering law-enforcement alerts, shelter-in-place and evacuation messages, public-health notices, air-quality advisories, flood/avalanche and power-outage messages, and specific internal templates for first-five-minute escalation. The SOP requires dispatch to send an Everbridge notification to the authority board and the board’s designated second-in-charge within five minutes for major incidents such as bomb threats, found explosives, structure fires and death notifications. The internal message is intended to get chiefs and second-in-charge leadership eyes on critical incidents quickly and then escalate to city and county leadership and broader public messaging if needed.

Sarah said the SOP also outlines who is authorized to order public messages and when to use internal versus public templates. The board discussed testing the system and agreed to populate the notification list with each member’s designated second-in-charge before a full test.

What’s next: staff will compile the second-in-charge list from board members and schedule an Everbridge test once contact lists are finalized.