Emergency Notification Systems and Crisis Communication – Blog

Communicating with the masses has been a fundamental challenge humans have grappled with since the dawn of existence. As time progressed, the ingenuity of man yielded advancements in the ability to communicate with his tribes, villages, and communities.

Many of us can still remember the shock and horror that went through our bodies when we heard about the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. While the Columbine attack was almost 20 years ago, the mass shooting at the Sandy school in Connecticut, which killed 20 6- and 7-year-old students and six adults, just passed its five-year mark in December.

Omnilert continues to lead the mass notification industry with the announcement of the latest critical communications platform release, Omnilert 6. Available immediately, Omnilert 6 enables greater automation, scalability, and integration with your organization’s emergency action and response plans. This release marks the next critical step in the evolution of the industry.

As recognized by the Jeanne Clery Act, emergencies on college campuses span from active shooters to bad weather to political protests. While the Clery Act is best known for requiring immediate emergency notifications, it actually goes much further by establishing a baseline for each institution’s immediate emergency response and evacuation procedures, including the use of electronic and cellular communication. With the framework of the Clery Act and modern technologies, true preparedness and the ability to quickly respond is now possible.

Success in organizational or campus safety is contingent upon careful planning and collaboration with other business units. The best outcomes occur when an emergency manager, operations manager, safety director, or the like, assembles a team to assist with testing and implementing their solution. When you’re working with hundreds, or even thousands, of people on a large campus the question comes down to how can you make sure you’re successfully reaching every person?

As an industry leader in emergency notification, one would imagine that we were swamped over the past few days with inquiries related to the false missile warning in Hawaii and Japan. We were. Whether the questions came from the media, customers who have implemented our solutions, or organizations planning to implement Omnilert, the inquiries were unified in theme.