This is a message from Bozeman Police Department. Bozeman Police are looking for a missing 10 year old girl named XXXXXX. XXXXX is 4′ 01″ tall, 55 lbs with dark hair wearing a blue tee shirt, black skirt and running shoes. She was last seen in the area of Rosa Way in Bozeman. If you have seen someone matching this description, contact Bozeman Police at (406) 582-2000. 5/23/26 20:10

Community Members enrolling in the Gallatin County Community Notification System is one of the best tools we have to ensure individuals are accurately and promptly notified about incidents affecting locations they care about.

When will this occur

• Friday, June 5th, 2026 at 12:00 PM MST in the Big Sky area.

What this test will do

• Verify registered users receive alerts on the devices they have chosen for the Big Sky area.
• Messages will only be sent by text-based delivery methods (SMS, Everbridge App, Email).

What we are not doing for this test

• Sending voice telephone calls.
• Sending alerts to individuals who have not registered in the system.
• Sending a Wireless Emergency Alert or Emergency Alert System message.
• Sending notifications via media releases, social media, etc.

What you will see

You will see the following text message through your subscribed text delivery methods at 12:00 pm on Friday, June 5, 2026.

What area will receive the test notification

The test message will be sent to registered users throughout the core Big Sky area and along US 191 between about Swan Creek and the North boundary of Yellowstone National Park.  To receive an alert for the test, you must have a location registered within the alerting area, or you must have the app installed and be located within the area at the time of the alert.

What should I do before the test

• Make sure you are registered in the Community Notification System, powered by Everbridge.
• If you are registered, verify your contact information and registered locations are current.
• Ensure your family and friends are all registered individually (don’t put multiple individual’s devices on one account).
• Download the Everbridge App from your app store (choose the blue Everbridge app) and enable notifications for the app.

What should I do after the test

• Nothing if you got alerted as expected.
• If something did not work as you expected, give us a call at (406) 548-0111.

Resources

The following resources can be used to help spread the word.

PDF Printable Flyer

Facebook Media File

Instagram Media File

Emergency Management in Big Sky

Gallatin County Emergency Management provides services to the Madison County portion of Big Sky through an interlocal agreement to provide a single emergency management program across the entire Big Sky Community.  This includes a single mass notification system for the entire community through Gallatin County’s Community Notification System.  Learn more about Gallatin County Emergency Management’s program at https://www.readygallatin.com/about-us/our-mission/.

Community Notification System

The Gallatin County Community Notification System is the sole emergency alerting platform in our service area for all cities, towns and unincorporated areas, to include Montana State University.  The platform is powered by Everbridge and allows for generation of alerts to opt in users, 911 telephone data, public source phone numbers, opt in incidents, wireless emergency alerts, emergency alert system and more.

Gallatin County utilizes multiple types and approaches to emergency notifications to give the best penetration into our communities and their varied connectivity and preferences.  However, to ensure the highest level of certainty you’ll receive a notification, follow the 3 steps below.

Sending emergency notifications is a complex topic for emergency officials, and not a topic we take lightly.  Below we’ll talk about some of the available tools, the benefits and challenges of each, and what you can do to ensure you receive emergency information.

The first challenge is determining if an incident is appropriate for an emergency message, and if so, which tools to use.  Every person in our community has their own opinion on what is appropriate and preferences on what types of devices they utilize.  Basically we are saying there is no single approach that reaches everyone and typically someone is upset that they got an alert, or upset they didn’t get one and felt they should.  So, we utilize the available tools listed below in a combination to best reach those affected by a given incident.

The ultimate guarantee of receiving emergency notifications is for you to register in the Community Notification System and also download the app.

Emergency Alert System

The Emergency Alert System (EAS) has been around for many decades in several forms and names.  This is the weird noise you hear on television and radio accompanied by a scroller and voice message.  EAS is an effective tool to reach everyone listening to a radio or television, but less effective than in the past with more people utilizing streaming services.  The challenges with EAS are that people must have a television or radio turned on to receive the message (people with NOAA weather radios can set them to alert for an EAS message).  The smallest area we can alert with this method is the entire county, making it hard to utilize for incidents affecting small geographic areas.

Voice Telephone Calls

We have several ways we can generate automated voice telephone calls.  One is with data derived from landline and VOIP phones that are tied to physical addresses.  The other is from individuals who have registered in our Community Notification System.  Voice calls can be very effective for notifying commercial facilities, areas with limited cellular coverage, or when people are asleep.  The number one challenge with voice calls is the physical time for delivery is long and can overwhelm the phone system in the affected area (we have to throttle our call rate to not crash the local phone system).  Next is the reality that many people no longer have land line phones, or if they do, they don’t use them and assume anyone calling is a telemarketer.  This leads to people often not answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize.  The only way for us to call cellular phones is for people to register in the Community Notification System (and if you happen to still have a fax machine, we can also send you a fax).

Text Messages

We can send text messages to individuals who have registered in the Community Notification System.  Text messages can be highly effective and are reliably read by individuals, but in large incidents where the cellular system is overloaded they can be heavily delayed to the point they are too late.

Emails

We can send emails to people who have registered in the Community Notification System.  Emails are highly effective in their ability to support very complete messages (we can pout more detail), include attachments and hit a lot of people quickly.  The downside is they may require someone looking at a device to see the message, are also subject to delays with overloaded communications systems in a large incident and can sometimes get caught in spam filters.

Apps

You can download the Everbridge App to receive notifications directly based on your current location (or registered locations) with or without registering in the Community Notification System.  The app is similar to a marriage of text messages and emails in that messages are fast and can support added detail and attachments.  However the app also has the same challenge with being subject to overloaded communications systems.  There are several third party apps that may pull our emergency messages from public feeds and also display them within their apps too.

Wireless Emergency Alerts

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are a relatively new player and have a lot of potential for incidents with an imminent life threat, but currently have significant tradeoffs.  There are a couple classifications of WEA, with AMBER Alerts being the one you are most likely to have seen.  As a very broad generalization, when we generate a WEA we define an alerting area and create a compliant text message, this is sent to cellular carriers and they pass the message directly to cellular phones on their network that they think are inside the defined alerting area.  The alerts generate a unique alert tone, pop up on your phone, does not require registration, and are not affected by cellular network congestion (they seem like a text message, but are much different).  Here are the challenges, which continue to diminish as the system matures.  Each cellular provider uses different approaches on how they determine what phones are in the alerting area and there can be significant overage on who gets alerted.  The smallest physical alerting area we can draw is somewhere around .5 miles by .5 miles and it is very common to see devices alerted up to 10 miles beyond the defined area.  Additionally, the size of the message we can send is limited to 90 characters on older devices and 360 on newer devices.  It is hard to accurately describe what is going on, who it applies to, what they are to do, and where they can get more information in 360 characters, let alone 90.  So a great tool, but tricky to send a clear message and focus the distribution to a small area.

Other Distribution

We also strive to distribute messaging about an incident through the popular social media sources in the affected area, but that can sometimes take time to contact the right people who can make those posts.  We have also utilized tools like NextDoor in areas with established subscriber bases or Facebook Local Alerts.  We will also generate a media release for most of these incidents, but many of our media outlets do not have 24/7 reporter coverage and may be delayed in their distribution of the information.

Summary

There is not a one stop shop for emergency alerting and we always strive to use the right tools for any given incident.  The best recommendation we can give that provides the best guarantee of you receiving emergency notifications for an incident affecting you, is to register in the Community Notification System.  When you register, you will tell us how you want to be notified and what locations you care about.  This allows us to very accurately target our messages and ensure those who need the message get it directly.

Program Objectives

• Reduce wildfire risk on private properties through performing wildfire risk assessments & education.
• Reduce wildfire risk on private properties through conducting low complexity fuels mitigation work.
• Increase initial attack capability in Gallatin County and surrounding areas.
• Provide support for volunteer fire agencies with mop up and patrol activities on wildfires.
• Build experience in the local fire service through building the crew’s training and experience on both local and large project fire assignments.

Crew Functions

• Perform Wildfire Risk Assessments for private property owners.
• Conduct wildfire mitigation hand work on private property utilizing hand and power tools.
• Respond to wildfires in Gallatin County on a wildland fire engine.
• Support extended attack wildfires around South Central Montana with suppression, mop up and patrol on a wildland fire engine.
• Participate in project fire assignments around the region.

Positions

We are hiring the following:

• Two Crew Leads who will manage the day to day of the crew.
  • 18 Pay Periods (3/3/25-12/6/25)
• 6 Crew Members
  • 7 Pay Periods (5/12/25-8/15/25)

Crew Organization

• For 2025 the crew is expected to be staffed with 6 crew members and 2 crew leads.  There may be opportunities for fill in personnel.
• The crew will primarily operate from utility vehicles and a type 6 wildland engine.  May also utilize other utility vehicles, UTVs and trailers.
• Crew will typically work a 40 hour work week.  The standard work week will typically consist of 10 hour days, 4 days a week.  Overtime will be paid for work in excess of 40 hours in a work week.
  • Work days and hours will vary based on project needs and fire activity.

Pay

• Crew Member:  $23.00 – 25.00/ hour
• Crew Lead:  $27.11 – 29.95/ hour

Housing

• We have limited housing available for crew members.

Desired Background

The first couple weeks of employment will consist heavily of training for the mitigation work you will be conducting.  Previous experience and skills are valuable, but an individual’s aptitude, personality and work ethic are just as important to us.

• General Skills
  • Basic Wildland Training (FFT2)
    • Courses: DNRC Basic Wildland, S-131, S-212, S-211
  • Drivers License with clean driving record.  Emergency Vehicle Operations Training
  • First Aid/ CPR
  • Arduous Work Capacity Test
  • Power Saw Training
• Crew Lead Skills
  • Engine Boss Experience
    • Courses:  S-230, S-231, S-290, ICS-200, S-219

Hiring Process

• Crew Lead Positions
  • Apply online at:  https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/gallatinmt/jobs/4794597/wildfire-mitigation-crew-leader
• Crew Member Positions
  • Send an email with letter of interest and resume to wildfire@readygallatin.com.

Gallatin County has several programs available in several locations around Gallatin County.  These programs can support a variety of work from low complexity home ignition zone work to equipment based landscape level projects (i.e. multi acre projects).  Depending on several factors the programs might cover between 60% and 100% of the costs.

Projects working on multiple neighbor’s property at the same time are highly effective for both the crews, as well as being more effective with a larger contiguous area of land being treated.  So, get some neighbors or your HOA together and reach out to mitigation@readygallatin.com to have a discussion today.

We are looking for someone to fill our Wildfire Battalion Chief position that can manage our wildfire program and mentor the operational personnel throughout the County and South Central Montana.  This position is key to supporting wildfire response and mitigation throughout a growing region of Montana.

The Position

This position has several primary areas of responsibility:

• Support operational response to wildfires for our direct protection and support for our local fire protection agencies.  Ideally this will primarily be in a coaching and mentoring role for local fire agency command officers with the goal of documented trainee opportunities with a focus on ICT4, ICT3, TFLD & DIVS NWCG Position Task Books..
• Manage County’s wildfire training program as course coordinator and an instructor for 100 and 200 level NWCG courses.  Occasionally 300 level courses will be hosted.  Support neighboring counties with delivery of courses.
• Management of Gallatin County Incident Qualification Committee and associated Position Task Books, issuance of Incident Qualification Cards, and record management in Incident Qualification System software.
• Management of Gallatin County Fuels Module.
• Coordination and support for out of area resource deployment.

This position is hosted by Gallatin County, but also supports several neighboring counties in South Central Montana.

Skills

• Qualified NWCG Division-Group Supervisor is desired.  If not qualified, must work towards qualification.
• Qualified NWCG Incident Commander Type 3 is desired.  If not qualified, must work towards qualification.
• Familiarity with NWCG training curriculum and instructional delivery methodologies.
• Familiarity with PMS 310-1 position qualification standards.
• Familiarity with local government fire protection agencies (municipal departments, districts and service areas).
• Employee supervision experience.

Position Details

Work Schedule

This is a year round position.  Three quarters of the year the position is full time (40 hours a week), one quarter (6 weeks) it is slated to be part time (20 hours a week or 40 hours per two week pay period).  This is a total of 1820 work hours annually.  This is intended to be a perk where the position maintains medical insurance year round, but has flexibility in the fall/ winter for large blocks of time off to do things like hunt, fish or ski.

Classification

This is an un-represented, non-exempt position (over time eligible).

Office Location

This position will be remote in the Gallatin County area.  Due to no available office space in our building, this position will be expected to maintain a home office as their primary work location.  Office equipment will be provided.

Being a regionally shared position, the successful candidate could live in Gallatin, Park, Southern Broadwater or Southeastern Jefferson Counties.  Exact location to be negotiated.

Pay

• The pay range for this position in State Fiscal Year 2025 is $30.47-37.13 hourly or $55,455-65-576 annually for 1820 hours.
• On Call pay when acting as Duty Officer
• Annual Boot Allowance
• Agency supplied uniform and PPE

Insurance

• Full health insurance.  No cost for employee, spouse and children can be added.
• Retirement
• Position is covered under the Montana Public Employee Retirement System (PERS). Overtime is counted towards retirement calculations.

Other Benefits

• Take home vehicle
• Agency Cell Phone
• Agency laptop
• Tuition Reimbursement Program

About the Agency

This position is focused primarily on supporting our Wildfire Program which is largely outlined in the County Rural Fire Operating Plan.  The key functions of this program are:

• Carry out the duties of the County Rural Fire Chief as called out in 7-33-22, Montana Code Annotated.  This includes direct protection of 338,000 acres.
• Carry out the County’s responsibilities in our County Cooperative Fire Control Agreement as the coordinating agency between local fire agencies and the Montana DNRC.
• Manage the County’s burn permit program.
• Manage the County’s wildfire mitigation program.

Want to Visit More?

Give Patrick Lonergan a call at (406) 548-0116.

Apply Now

Apply at:  https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/gallatinmt/jobs/4573484/wildfire-battalion-chief