Alameda County emergency management outlines limits of AC Alert, staff increases and a $250,000 annual Everbridge cost

Alameda County's Office of Emergency Services (Alco OES) told the Public Protection Committee on July 24 that the county's unified mass-notification platform (branded AC Alert, powered by Everbridge) provides voice calls, SMS and email and bridges federal systems such as Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), EAS and NOAA weather radio, but has notable technical and policy limitations.

"We use a vendor known as Everbridge, and then we brand the system as a whole as AC Alert," said Brent Blazer, emergency manager. He summarized opt-in figures: about 118,000 detailed Everbridge registrations, roughly 215,000 through a simpler opt-in process, and nearly 1.3 million records via a vendor-provided resident-connect data set that helps close the gap toward the county population of about 1.6 million.

Presenters described practical constraints: federal WEA messages support only English and Spanish and are limited by character counts; the county cannot change those federal limitations. Blazer said Everbridge notifications can be auto-translated into more than 150 languages, and the county pairs the alerting platform with a mapping application (Genesys Protect) to create consistent evacuation zones and standardized language for orders and all-clear notices.

OES staff also reviewed lessons from the Los Angeles fire response, where rapid tactical messaging and a vendor transition contributed to message errors and repeated, countywide alerts when only targeted messaging was intended. "One of the biggest challenges was at one point messages went countywide when they should have only gone to one particular area," Blazer said, citing technology and training gaps.

Staff described actions already underway: more frequent training (twice-monthly and on-demand one-on-one sessions with local jurisdictions), monthly meetings of emergency managers, outreach to city managers and mayors to promote shared use of AC Alert, and a feasibility study on mesh and siren technologies. Alco OES said it increased emergency-management staffing substantially last year and expects two more hires in the coming weeks to bring staffing from two or three to nine people.

Officials warned the committee the alerting platform and the resident data are funded primarily with UASI grant dollars; Blazer said the Everbridge contract and related data cost about $250,000 per year plus roughly $40,000 in staff time. "Every dime of it is paid for with UASI money," staff said, and urged the Board to track federal funding uncertainty because cuts would leave the county to absorb roughly $300,000 annually to maintain the service.

Supervisors asked whether the system could be used for law-enforcement events such as immigration-enforcement actions; staff said Title 47 US Code restricts what can be sent by WEA and that they were not certain that an immigration-enforcement notice would qualify as a permissible WEA category. OES recommended early alerting where possible and emphasized coordination with cities for follow-on, granular messaging.

The committee requested an annual OES briefing moving forward and discussed lobbying to preserve FEMA/UASI funding. Staff said they will bring updates to disaster-council and committee meetings and continue outreach and training with local jurisdictions.