Case Study: Contra Costa County’s Office of Emergency Services achieves centralized, rapid emergency alerting that protects 1.1 million residents with BlackBerry AtHoc

How Contra Costa County Protects over a Million People from Earthquakes, Chemicals, and More

Contra Costa County’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) protects 1.1 million residents across a densely populated California region with a large petrochemical industry and a diverse population. The county faced fragmentation and interoperability challenges—many agencies, platforms and devices meant warnings were often staggered or inconsistent—creating risk during chemical spills, fires, floods and other life‑threatening incidents.

The OES centralized alerting with BlackBerry AtHoc (Alert and Connect), deploying branded, geotargeted, multi‑channel messages, reusable templates, internal callouts and limited facility access for rapid local notifications. The result is faster, unified evacuations and responder activation (a recent large fire was evacuated and contained), streamlined incident logging and reporting, stronger public trust, roughly 13% household registration for alerts, and a system the county now uses sparingly for life‑threatening events while serving as a regional model for emergency preparedness.

Contra Costa County’s Office of Emergency Services

Heather Tiernan

Warning System Manager