BILLINGS - Yellowstone County has a new emergency alert system.
The new system, Everbridge, costs about the same as the old system, CodeRED, at $30,000 a year.
K.C. Williams, Yellowstone County disaster and emergency services director, says the new system has much more potential.
When emergencies happen at Billings Clinic, Everbridge is the technology used to help coordinate the response.
"They can call in their staff stuck a quick message saying hey, we need some help," said Zach Benoit, the hospital's community relations manager. "This is going on. Who can come in?"
The hospital has been using the system since the fall of 2022.
"It works through that list pretty quickly so people are getting it within a matter of minutes of you, hitting send on that message," Benoit said.
And the reach is expanding.
Yellowstone County stopped using CodeRED on Dec. 31 and made the shift to Everbridge to alert emergency responders on Jan. 1.
"We use it almost exclusively to send out emergency alerts," Williams said.
A departure from a previous and widely underused system called CodeRED.
"Even if you had CodeRED over the last five years, it's very possible that you never got an emergency alert because you weren't in the area that was affected by an emergency," Williams said.
Williams says a variety of reasons led to the CodeRED alert system never really catching on in Yellowstone County.
In 2022, the app had about 16,000 users.
Williams says the system was never advertised properly, something the county hopes to rectify with the rollout of Everbridge.
He also says the software was sometimes difficult to use.
"We found that it would be easier if we had a better user interface that was more intuitive, that was easier to use," Williams said.
St. Vincent Healthcare also uses Everbridge.
The city and Billings School District 2 have plans to implement the system soon, the tool being used to save lives in Yellowstone County and beyond.
"We just want to make sure that we're using it responsibly and thoughtfully," Benoit said. "So we're not inundating people with messages, but we're also getting them the important ones when it matters."
"Still, I'm a fan of CodeRED," Williams said. "Between the two of them, you should be covered for the majority of the places you go in the United States."
