Cities removing tornado sirens in favor of texts, media and Internet warnings

[Mike Tobin]

I feel this is not a good thing. I use the internet from everything I do for my team. How ever I feel that there are still people who do not use social media or the internet especially the older generation.

 

[Mike Smith]

Related to this topic: For those of you who live in Kansas and Oklahoma, Dr. Laura Myers -- perhaps the leading social scientist working in the field of storm warnings -- will be addressing the ICT AMS Chapter Tuesday evening. We are hosting the meeting at AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions in downtown Wichita. We'd be very pleased to have you (no charge) if you would like to come. Just PM me for full information.

 

[rdale]

I feel this is not a good thing. I use the internet from everything I do for my team. How ever I feel that there are still people who do not use social media or the internet especially the older generation.

But again if they were indoors or sleeping then they won't be alerted with sirens, so if this provokes them to use other better cheaper means then it's a good call...

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

Too much dependance upon personal electronics. UNhealthy and UNnatural. What about those who just aren't digitally hooked up? I consider the loss of sirens a breach in public safety. The fallout from such a decison is waiting in the wings . . .

 

[rdale]

Too much dependance upon personal electronics. UNhealthy and UNnatural. What about those who just aren't digitally hooked up? I consider the loss of sirens a breach in public safety. The fallout from such a decison is waiting in the wings . . .

I thought this would have died by now

In the 50 years they've had sirens there, the use of a siren has saved exactly 0 lives. NOAA Weather Radio is not an unreliable piece of personal electronics. A tornado siren that is manually activated by the fire chief who hears about the warning, gets in his car, drives to the fire station, and presses the button, is not a reliable system. The community chose not to keep that system going. Seems like a no-brainer in the economy we live in today.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

I thought this would have died by now

In the 50 years they've had sirens there, the use of a siren has saved exactly 0 lives. NOAA Weather Radio is not an unreliable piece of personal electronics. A tornado siren that is manually activated by the fire chief who hears about the warning, gets in his car, drives to the fire station, and presses the button, is not a reliable system. The community chose not to keep that system going. Seems like a no-brainer in the economy we live in today.

There is no way to gauge if it has been effective in saving lives - regardless of where they are. How can that be a statistic? What kind of poll was taken? Such a statistic would be useless anyway IMO.

However, I think that the loss of a siren is another link lost for those who must work in the field, car dealership, or otherwise poised to have no other way of knowing what may be happening at any given moment. Or for those who don't pay attention to TV, radio, or the internet. But to remove it would be to remove the first notion that there is danger present. Something that has been relied upon in the past by those who have learned to depend on it. Esspecially the small towns that are generally the ones that have the greatest chance of being the yearly victim of town anihilliation.

But I agree that the weather radio is probably the best. Too bad for those who forgot to replace the batteries when they needed it most . . . Otherwise. I'd agree with you, as I do most of the time. . .

 

[rdale]

There is no way to gauge if it has been effective in saving lives

Because there has not been a tornado in the city, hence no tornado deaths, since records began in the 1950s.

Such a statistic would be useless anyway IMO.

Why? If there's no viable threat, why spend money on alerting from that barely-existing threat?

 

[Mike Smith]

While I have no problem with NOAA Weather Radio as one source of critical warnings, there have been a number of high-profile failures that have caused deaths. For example, the 1:50am Evansville, IN tornado. NWR failed and 25 died. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evansville_Tornado_of_November_2005 I could provide a longer list, but you get the idea.

Second, even if the NWR is working properly, it is often not a timely source of warnings. As the tornado was 2/3rds of the way across JLN, SGF issued an updated tornado warning. It was 324 words. All four verses of the Star Spangled Banner are 312 words. When there are multiple tornadoes, as there were in south central Kansas on April 14. 2012, it took as long as five minutes (!) for programing to cycle to a given warning (yes, I timed it).

Again, I have no problem with NWR as one of at least two sources in critical situations.

 

[rdale]

Nobody listens to all 324 words, so that's not a factor. And very few have NOAA Weather Radio in the first place. But according to the posters here, thousands are at risk in that city because the sirens are being removed, and they can't afford a cell phone, or even a measly $10/year Weathercall subscription. Not sure what other options exist?

 

[Mike Johnston]

Are you talking about one particular location, or cities in general? I have a hard time believing that no lives have been saved by sirens anywhere in the 50+ years of their existence.

 

[John Farley]

Please post a link to said research that you speak of. Text alerts, NOAA Weather Radio's, etc... they provide information. A siren sounding, what information are you getting from that? I guess if a siren is sounding as a result of a lightning strike, then people who hear said siren sounding will know it's because of a lightning strike as a oppose to an EF5 tornado heading right for them. The fact is, people have become use to tornado sirens sounding and nothing happening, fact is people ignore tornado sirens for the most part. They're outdated, and to me pointless. Outdoor tornado sirens were put into use during a time when you didn't have all the technology that we have today. We have radio, television, NOAA Weather Radio, text alerts, email alerts.... tornado sirens are pointless and for the most part, people ignore them and more often than not, people get confused by them.

There are so many studies on this issue that it is almost a truism in natural hazards warning research. Warnings from multiple sources are more likely to be heard, because different sources reach different people, and more likely to be heeded, because when people hear a similar message from multiple sources, they are more likely to take it seriously. Below are linked a couple sources that summarize best-practices in hazard warnings and if you just search the word "multiple" in each of them, you will see that these points are made:

http://www.ifrc.org/PageFiles/103323/1227800-IFRC-CEWS-Guiding-Principles-EN.pdf

http://www.gfdrr.org/sites/gfdrr.org/files/Implementing_Early_Warning_Systems.pdf

Sirens don't literally provide information (except for the newer systems that actually do, because they have voice broadcast capability), but people in tornado-prone areas know what they mean. Sorry for the slow reply to this comment; I was travelling internationally and am just catching up again with this thread now.

 

[rdale]

Are you talking about one particular location

Yes. The particular location that is the point of this thread

Nobody (well, other than James Spann) is suggesting we remove all sirens everywhere.

 

[Mike Johnston]

Yes. The particular location that is the point of this thread

Nobody (well, other than James Spann) is suggesting we remove all sirens everywhere.

Oh, so I guess the 2 sirens in Antigo, Wisconsin are the point of this thread? That is pretty trivial, don't you think? I thought this topic was introduced as a broad-based discussion on the merits of sirens vs. internet-based communications of warnings.

 

[rdale]

Oh, so I guess the 2 sirens in Antigo, Wisconsin are the point of this thread?

That's not how it started, but when people started saying that this was a bad decision, and the community will regret it, blah blah that's what it turned into.

I thought this topic was introduced as a broad-based discussion on the merits of sirens vs. internet-based communications of warnings.

Ehh, that would be a quick discussion: Sirens are useful only in areas where outdoor notification is otherwise hard to do. Only useful when local alerting agencies use them correctly. End of discussion

 

[Mike Smith]

Nobody listens to all 324 words, so that's not a factor.

You missed my point. The point is that these 324 words take forever for the concatenated voice to speak. If three tornado warnings are in effect for one NWR station (as was the case 4/11/14 in southern Kansas) those plus other programing made it take five minutes to find out where the tornado warnings were in effect.

I agree the number of people using NWR is low. That said, these ridiculously long tornado warnings make it nearly useless in a major outbreak.