College changes emergency alert system after tsunami scare

Cloud-based emergency alerts are becoming commonplace on campuses.

Marymount College in Palo Verdes, Calif., has switched to a cloud-based emergency notification system after the campus’s old alert technology failed to warn students and faculty of a possible tsunami headed toward the school last spring.

Marymount officials said that the aging emergency notification system not only left the 800-student campus–located near the Port of Los Angeles–without timely warning, but school administrators weren’t able to contact the company in charge of the system as reports swirled of a tsunami off the California coast.

Denise Fessenbecker, the college’s director of general services, said customer service representatives who managed Marymount’s account with the emergency alert company didn’t respond to the school’s requests for six days after the tsunami threats first surfaced.…Read More

Company claim: Emergency alerts get to students in 20 seconds

Universities have failed in recent years to send alerts to students.

A two-inch keychain might be the solution for campus officials hoping to avoid public scrutiny next time their emergency text messages hit a logjam and don’t reach student and faculty cell phones.

IntelliGuard Systems’ RavenAlert, which provides the campus community with a keychain that rings when it receives an emergency message, avoids delays by sending thousands of messages over a private wireless network.

So instead of connecting to a myriad of mobile devices – all with different internet protocol addresses – the RavenAlert system sends the college’s alert to thousands of keychains with the same address.…Read More

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