When wildfires unexpectedly broke out this January, it caught the residents and local businesses of Southern California by surprise. Multiple organizations, from higher education institutions to enterprise organizations, turned to Veoci to coordinate response efforts, protect their assets and support their team members and local communities. Despite their varied business structures, these organizations demonstrated a shared truth: modern crisis management requires real-time communication, adaptability and centralization. Veoci provided the digital infrastructure to achieve all three.
How Veoci Empowered Wildfire Response Efforts Across Different Sectors
In response to the emerging wildfire threat, the University of Southern California (USC) swiftly leveraged Veoci to coordinate communication across executive leadership, academic departments, and operational teams. Daily virtual briefings, backed by Veoci’s live Dashboard visualizations, kept stakeholders informed on shelter availability, air quality status and employee needs.
USC emphasized the value of the Veoci Threads feature, which helped centralize discussions on multiple issues and aided the team in finding resolutions quickly. Narine Amroyan, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Program Manager at USC, shared that, “Veoci proved to be an invaluable tool in coordinating USC’s response by connecting key personnel, enabling real-time communication, and keeping everyone informed throughout the crisis.”
In the financial sector, another Veoci customer leveraged the platform to overlay wildfire perimeters, evacuation zones and real-time air quality data onto staff home locations. With this visibility, they initiated targeted wellness check-ins and built public-facing Dashboards that gave displaced employees quick access to critical resources like housing and mental health support.
This organization also found support within the Veoci user community in the affected area. Staring into the face of a crisis, these users banded together to share data, solutions and critical information to better serve their community. One of Veoci’s greatest strengths is its remarkable adaptability that empowers users not only to act swiftly, but also to coordinate with the surrounding community. When you sign on with Veoci, not only do you receive the support of our team, but you become a part of a valuable network of peers that you can reach out to in a time of crisis.
Meanwhile, a national franchise operation used Veoci to track hundreds of locations, vendor sites and thousands of employee residences. By generating incident reports directly from wildfire perimeter data, they rapidly identified impacted areas and launched outreach efforts within minutes, replacing older and less efficient methods like mass emails and manual reporting.
Adaptability: Building Solutions in the Middle of a Crisis
Across all three organizations, adaptability emerged as a critical theme. Rather than sticking rigidly to predefined templates, teams modified workflows, added air quality tracking in real time and developed new surveys on the fly to collect essential information from those impacted.
One standout example included adjusting Dashboards to serve mobile devices, ensuring displaced employees could still access vital services. Another team created evacuation check-ins using QR codes, offering leadership instant insights into staff safety and availability.
Veoci: One Source for Centralized Communications
Before adopting Veoci, emergency communications required a careful mix of disparate emails, complicated spreadsheets, and slow-moving paper processes.. But after implementing Veoci, these organizations gained a single, consolidated environment for response activities that can be customized for each unique need, which proved to be critical in responding to this incident. From executive updates to employee wellness tracking, every interaction lived in one place, enabling faster, data-driven decision-making and reducing misinformation fueled by chaotic external news reports.
Lessons for the Future
The January wildfires proved that emergency management technology is no longer optional; a platform is foundational in responding effectively to major incidents. By leveraging Veoci’s flexibility, real-time collaboration tools, and integrated reporting capabilities, organizations across sectors minimized disruption, protected their community, and improved their resilience.
More importantly, these responses highlight a future where crisis management isn’t reactive, but proactive and driven by live data, shared digital spaces, and empowered teams ready to adapt at a moment’s notice.
