Do you have a Boulder address? The university will soon opt all current students and employees with Boulder, Colorado, residential addresses into Everbridge, the emergency alert messaging system used by Boulder Police, Boulder Fire-Rescue, Boulder County Sheriff’s Department and Longmont Department of Public Safety.
Everbridge is used to send advisories, warnings and orders to take action during life-threatening situations such as police activity, fires, floods and other natural disasters in the city of Boulder and unincorporated Boulder county. The system also shares critical weather alerts and alerts subscribers of missing and endangered persons.
“I believe this solution is the best first step to creating a safer, more informed, community,” said Lucie Nguyen, student body president. “By uploading CU affiliates’ contact information to Everbridge, students and others will be more aware of emergencies that are not under CUPD’s jurisdiction.”
Normally a self opt-in system, CU Boulder will automatically opt-in current student, faculty and staff, adding information including cell phone numbers, local addresses and colorado.edu email addresses for those not already in Everbridge. An opt-out option will be provided in the initial notification.
Once information is uploaded, students and employees will receive an email and/or text notification to create an account and set a password. Campus community members can choose to add additional information, such as their work address, loved ones’ work and school addresses and more. Students and employees are encouraged to create a profile for every person in the household that has a mobile device.
If they wish, users can opt out of the system once they are notified that the university has uploaded their information, but removing contact information or deleting an Everbridge account means users will not be able to receive emergency notifications for incidents taking place in the city or unincorporated county. University stakeholders can also opt out after receiving Everbridge alerts, once they graduate or once they cease employment with the university.
Users can choose how to receive Everbridge alerts, including voice calls, text messages, TTY/TDD or emailed alerts.
“This is a continued effort to improve the safety of our campus affiliates in and around the CU Boulder campus,” said Garry DeJong, director of CU Boulder’s Events and Emergency Management Division.
Everbridge alerts are sent based on current local addresses. Students and employees are strongly encouraged to ensure this information is accurate in Buff Portal and MyCUInfo, before the planned mid- to late-November upload. University stakeholders will then be responsible for keeping their information up-to-date in Everbridge.
Some university affiliates who live in Boulder county may already be familiar with Everbridge. Those with landline phones from Century Link or VOIP phone from Xfinity/Comcast are automatically in the system.
Everbridge is separate from the university’s emergency notification system, CU Boulder alerts. Anyone with a colorado.edu email automatically receives emergency alerts via university email. To ensure receipt of text alerts, students are reminded to add or update their mobile phone numbers in Buff Portal. Employees are encouraged to do the same in MyCUInfo.
All students, faculty, staff, community members, parents and other family members are encouraged to follow CU Boulder Alerts on Twitter and enable push notifications to receive emergency messages for all three levels of alerts the university sends.
