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City presents Hagerty follow-up: emergency operations, Everbridge alerts and staffing improvements
Summary
The city’s emergency communications director updated council on implementing 74 recommendations from the Hagerty incident-response assessment, citing new admin regulation 1.9, WebEOC resource tracking, expanded Richmond Ready subscribers through Everbridge, and plans to bring an updated emergency operations plan to council in June.
Stephen Willoughby, director of the Department of Emergency Communications, Preparedness and Response, told the Public Safety Standing Committee that the city has implemented a range of operational changes stemming from the Hagerty incident-response assessment after January 2025’s water and winter-weather failures.
Willoughby said the city has formalized emergency operations procedures, clarified department responsibilities through administrative regulation 1.9, created a multi-agency coordination center, improved resource tracking via WebEOC, and fast-tracked the Everbridge platform to improve Richmond Ready alerts. He told the committee Richmond Ready now has over 10,000 subscribers and that the updated integrated preparedness plan and emergency-operations plan will be brought to council for adoption.
He also described staffing changes and added training roles: a new training-and-exercise manager has started, and the office is reviewing recommendations that would increase emergency-management staff from the current small team to a recommended seven to ten positions. Willoughby said after-action reviews following recent weather events have identified software and logistics gaps that remain under active review.
Council members asked for the cost of prior consultant reports and for an implementation schedule for outstanding Hagerty items; Willoughby agreed to provide the reports and associated costs to council staff.
The committee did not vote on additional emergency-management appropriations at this session; members said they expected staff to return with documentation and timelines in the near term.
