Disaster exercises can put your emergency preparedness and response plan to the test … but what does it take to plan an effective drill? How do you gauge the effectiveness of your plan after the test? What kind of scenario will help you sharpen your procedures? Find out lessons learned from the US District Court, Central District of California, which recently conducted a full-scale disaster exercise that was a year in the making.

1. How to Plan for a Disaster:
Drill, Baby, Drill
Theresa Doty
Chief D
Chi f Deputy of Operations
t fO ti
United States District Court – Central District of California

2. About Everbridge
• Leader in incident notification systems
• Fast-growing global company with
more than 1,000 clients in more
1 000
than 100 countries
• Serve the Global 2000, federal
government organizations healthcare
organizations,
systems, state and local government,
military, financial services firms, and
universities
• 100% focused on incident notification
solutions that merge technology
and expertise
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3. Agenda
Part 1: Presentation
• How to plan the exercise
• What role message mapping should play in your drill
• Why feedback is important
• How to evaluate what worked and what didn’t
didn t
Part 2: Q&A
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4. Note:
Q&A slides are currently
available to everyone on
blog.everbridge.com
Use the Q&A
function to
submit your
questions.
questions
4

6. Who we are
• The Central District of California serves 18 million
citizens in a 7 county region and is the largest Federal
Court in the nation with over 500 clerks office and
chambers personnel.
• While we are non-first responders, we are part of the
National Essential Functions (NEFs) to ensure the
continuity of constitutional government.
• We have 4 geographically dispersed sites: Two in
g g p y p
Downtown LA, one in Santa Ana and one in Riverside.

7. Our geographic locations

8. Where do we fit?
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

9. What is COOP for the Federal Courts?
Meeting our obligations for National Essential Functions:
• Ensuring continuity of the Constitution.
• Providing leadership visible to the public.
• Defending the Constitution.
• O p
Our primary mission essential function is to provide first
y p
appearances within 48 hours of arrest for all new detainees.
• Our goal is to be able to perform this function within
12 hours of the onset of a COOP.

10. Risk assessment
Fires are common during the summer due to extreme heat.
Mudslides typically caused by rain in areas that were
previously burned by the fires listed above.
Transportation gridlocks which could affect the
transportation of employees into and from the office.
Earthquakes which in part or whole, disables our
q p
facilities and the transportation routes to our facilities.
Terrorist actions at one or more sites.
Pandemics

11. How we use Everbridge
Aware / QuickLaunch / SmartGIS
• Notify court staff, other government agencies, and the public about
our response to emergencies (or other important announcements).
• Use quota notifications to fill special needs positions
identified in tt ib t
id tifi d i attributes.
• Track responses and geo-map targeted recipients.
• Implemented orders of succession to ensure continuity of
leadership and conference in leaders for quick decision making.
• Provide limited access (QuickLaunch) to the USM for notifying
judges of incidents or other important routine announcements

12. Data structure

13. Message delivery structure
US Other Government
Marshals Agencies
AUSA
CSO
US DFPD
District GSA
MDC
Court Nurse
Pretrial Services
Judges
District and Magistrate (CAC) Probation
Bankruptcy Court Judges USM
Circuit Court of Appeals USBK
Media & Community
District Court Staff
Di t i t C t St ff Press
Executives Radio
Decision Team TV
Communications Team Superior Courts
Central Command Team
Relocation Team
Emergency Operations Group Tier 1
CA Bar Associations
CA Bar Associations
Emergency Operations Group Tier 2 Counties of: LA, Orange, Riverside,
Staff Other Courts Emergency Organizations Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Bernardino
9th Circuit and San Luis Obispo
LAPD, LAFD, FEMA,
AZ District
DOT –LA, DWP – LA,
NV District
Office of the Mayor,
Office of the Mayor
CA Eastern, Northern
and others

14. Why Everbridge?
Provides a robust notification system which activates the
COOP and ties into the other elements of COOP
Conference call – Decision Team activates COOP
Scalability – To include other agencies and groups
Customization – USM notify judges of incidents by building
Lines of succession – Operations, relocation teams

15. Why Everbridge?
Provides a robust notification system which activates the
COOP and ties into the other elements of COOP
Repeat broadcasts – Using time intervals as needed
Groups/attributes – Allow for quotas and geo mapping
Response reporting – For locating essential staff
Attachments – Maps, instructions and access codes
SmartGIS – Geographically targeting receipients

16. Why such a sophisticated system for
non-first
non first responders?
• P bli and staff safety
Public d t ff f t
• Responsible leadership
• Facilitates accomplishing our mission
• Management tool

17. Preliminary testing
Intensive internal test in using the following methods:
Emergency and standard notification
Quota notification
Conference call
Polling

18. How we promoted COOP awareness

19. Training
• 5 days of staff training in all 3 divisions in
preparation f Di
ti for Disaster D
t Days (NLE)
• Monthly training meetings for Essential Functions Team
• Other agencies briefed
Interagencies
COOP Policy Committee
Management Group

20. National level exercise
Notifications:
Conference call with Decision Team to activate COOP
Notified COOP Team, All CACD judges and other agencies
Team
Notified all CACD staff
Quota notifications skillset specific

21. National level exercise
• Staff involvement in exercise:
• Contact the CACD Employee Emergency Line
• Contact the Out of State Emergency Line (ARMA)
• Update InfoWeb and check emergency backup
• Visit COOP Website and email the COOP team
• Briefing notes by various key teams

22. Notification schedule

23. NLE briefing notes

24. NLE in action
1
2
1. Communication Team launches the exercise
2. Chief Deputy Doty joins conference

25. NLE in action
2
1
1.
1 Relocation T
R l ti Team activated th
ti t d through ENS
h
gathers to discuss strategy
2. Emergency Operations Team deployed
through ENS reviews scenario
g
3. Divisions are video-conferenced in
3

26. NLE in action
1
2
1. Staff respond to ENS quota call
and check-in for duty
2. Communication team celebrates a
successful conclusion of exercise

27. Emergency
preparedness
website
Secured login
User roles
Document storage
Redundancy
COOP.CACD.USCOURTS.GOV

28. Analyzing the data

29. Incident Notification
Marc Ladin
VP of Marketing, Everbridge
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30. Incident notification solutions address common
communication challenges
• Communicate quickly, easily, and • Reduce miscommunications and
efficiently with large numbers of control rumors with accurate
accurate,
people in minutes, not hours, making consistent messages (3P = 1N)
sure that information about your
disaster exercise is conveyed • Free key personnel to perform
critical tasks by automating
• Use all contact paths especially manual, time-intensive,
when sending crucial in-exercise error-prone processes
communication
• Satisfy regulatory requirements
• Ensure two-way communications with extensive and complete
to know what parts of your exercise reporting of delivery attempts and
are working and which parts need two-way acknowledgements from
your attention recipients
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31. Key evaluation criteria for an incident
notification system
• Experience and expertise
• Ease of use
• Ability to reach all contact paths,
including voice email native SMS
voice, email,
(over SMPP and SMTP), IM, and more
• Ease of integration
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32. Note:
slides are currently
Q&A available to everyone on
blog.everbridge.com
Use the Q&A
function to
submit your
questions.
questions
32

33. Missed anything?
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, g
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i di
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34. Communication
resources
Contact information White papers, literature,
case studies
everbridge.com/resources
Theresa Doty
Upcoming webinars
Chief Deputy of Operations everbridge.com/webinars
theresa_doty@cacd.uscourts.gov
1 213 894 5160
1-213-894-5160
Marc Ladin
marc.ladin@everbridge.com
l di @ b id
1-818-230-9700
blog.everbridge.com
twitter.com/everbridge
facebook.com/everbridgeinc
f b k / b id i
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