Customer perspective: Fairfax County, VA – Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) test

On April 5, 2018, emergency managers from the National Capital Region surrounding Washington, D.C. successfully tested the Wireless Emergency Alert System using the Everbridge Critical Event Management platform, sending a mobile alert to 5.5 million people. Sulayman Brown, Assistant Coordinator for Fairfax County, Virginia Office of Emergency Management, describes the months of preparation leading up to the WEA test, and how the 20 NCR jurisdictions involved in the exercise coordinated and planned for the test using the Everbridge system. “The Federal Government did a nationwide WEA test. And I’d like to think that our success and what we did with Everbridge was the reason they decided to move forward with that.”