Case Study: California State University San Marcos achieves rapid, campus-wide evacuation and immediate lockdown with Alertus Technologies

California State University San Marcos - Customer Case Study

California State University San Marcos, a 13,000‑student suburban campus, faced acute emergency communication challenges after a wildfire evacuation and a possible gunman lockdown exposed failures in its aging Visiplex system. The university needed a unified mass‑notification solution that would integrate with existing MIR3 text/email/phone alerts, digital signage, door locks and desktop messaging. After evaluating options, the campus chose Alertus Technologies and its Alertus Desktop Notification and Alert Beacon® components to replace the antiquated system.

Alertus Technologies helped the university implement a fully integrated system — new loudspeakers tied to Alert Beacon® and a text‑to‑speech module, three speaker banks, desktop alerts, digital signage, door locks, campus phones and MIR3 integration — plus a dispatch panic button. The result: campus‑wide alerts that once took 3–4 minutes to send now deploy in seconds, enabling a coordinated wildfire evacuation (campus cleared in about an hour) and rapid lockdowns with timely updates and an all‑clear within roughly 20–30 minutes; the campus also reported strong positive feedback on the faster, multi‑channel notifications.

California State University San Marcos

Robert Williams

Emergency and Business Recovery Manager