Outdoor Warning Sirens- Your county's policy?

[Mikel Shively]

I am just curious how many know what your local county's Emergency Mgmt policy is on siren activation. From what I understand, they vary widely. My county has a policy of activating on only confirmed spotter reports. I cannot say I can completely concur with that policy, especially during the overnight periods, as there may or may not be any spotters even out at that time of the day. Complicating that is, of course, that tornadoes are harder to spot at night. Also, as many people are aware, the KIRK area does not really have the best radar coverage, as radars from EAX, DMX, LSX, and DVN all converge on the area.

If your county does not have a "activate only on confirmation" policy, then what is the critera needed for activation?

Im trying to gather a consensus of what other counties' policies are, and the best advice of the weather community as a whole to see if I need to discuss this with the Emergency Management director to see if this policy needs to be re-evaluated or not.

Comments and suggestions will be appreciated greatly.

 

[Jeremy Lemanski]

For my city: At one time, i don't know if this has been changed or not, they would sound the sierns at the word of a spotted tornado. This meant, and this example did occur, if someone called into the local radio station and said there was a tornado at so and so, they would sound the sierns.

Like i said, that above did occur about 8 years ago or so during a fall day with lots of showers and low clouds. Of course there was no tornado, but i still remember raking leaves in the yard and having a couple walking a dog ask me " whats the siern going off for?".

During the past couple years, the siern process has been pretty awful. There have been times it would go off as late as 20 minutes after the warning has been issued, sometimes it would go off for 5 minutes, be shut off, then started again later. Sometimes they would restart the siern even after the storm had gone through and the threat was clearly over.

Overall, its a joke.

 

[rdale]

We're making a bunch of PSA's to change our sirens from "Tornado Siren" to "There's Something Bad Happening, Turn On Your TV." It's expanding to extreme winds, hazmat releases, evacuations, etc. and then relying on EAS alerts to get out the "why"

 

[Nick Smith]

Hamilton County, Ohio:

1. Tornado Warning

2. Severe Thunderstorm Warning during a Tornado Watch

 

[Jesse Risley]

McDonough County, IL

1. Tornado Warning

2. Severe Thunderstorm Warning, depending on circumstances, as authorized by EMA or LE

3. County Emergency Manager can always authorize activation as well, even if a warning is not immediately in effect

 

[Danny Neal]

Cook County, IL - Broken up into Districts since it is such a huge county and there are millions of people living here.

If a tornado warning is issued within 20 miles of said district the sirens are activated. Once in a blue moon will the sirens be activated on something non NWS issued (I.E - Public reports of rotation) I know out in the further outlying counties though it is usually up to the discretion of the EM in charge as I have heard Will County sirens being activated when there wasn't even severe weather only based on public reports.

Normally our county of Cook is overly cautious when flipping the switch due to the fact that over 3 million people live here.

Sometimes the sirens will go into attack mode in certain towns due to a fire call.

 

[Anthony Silver]

Kansas City, MO

Sirens are immediately activated by the City's EOC or Fire Dispatch when:

A) The National Weather Service issues a Tornado Warning for Clay, Jackson, and/or Platte Counties (only when the threat includes the KCMO City Limits)

B) Trained spotters report a tornado near or within the city limits, and

C) Law Enforcement or other emergency personnel report a tornado.

 

[Kevin Bowman]

in the Chicago area i think it goes by a city by city basis, 9/22/06 is the only time i can remember when Chicago had all its sirens going for an actual warning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0m1BN4ZmAQ&mode=related&search=

 

[John Diel]

Kay County, OK doesn't have a policy that I'm aware of. Essentially it's left to the individual communities. However we do have a spotter base for KCEM and will report what we see to each EOC depending on where we are at.

I'm not sure if our City has a specific policy of "When" the sirens should be blown. My guess is that the City EM decides. I've heard the sirens go off for potential high wind events and not blown on a tornado warning. I've heard them blown on a no tornado warning active, but rotation was observed.

That's just the city live in though. My personal criteria for recommending from the field is minimum of rotation observed and on track to enter the city to which I'm reporting to. Also winds over 70mph (estimated) will get my recommendation as well.

 

[David Draun]

Northern Cook County IL: Very liberal and often false alarms in the NW Burbs

1. "Scary-looking low clouds" during severe thunderstorms (dark shelf/roll clouds) It's rare but it happens more times than not.
2. Public report of funnel-shaped cloud
3. Doppler-indicated tornado within 10-15 miles whether we are in the path of it or not

Also there are many sirens, on a given test Tuesday, I can sometimes hear about a dozen simultaneous sounds.

 

[Robert Dewey]

The first Saturday of every month as a test. Other than that, they don't go off because we don't get such weather around these parts

Actually, they go off for tornado warnings only I'm pretty sure. Back in the late 90's Oakland and Wayne county were under a warning for a severe thunderstorm capable of producing "destructive winds in excess of 90MPH" and the sirens never sounded (and we never had winds near that, FWIW).

Other than that, they go off randomly in the middle of the night sometimes... some sort of electrical interference, I'm sure.

 

[Danny Neal]

in the Chicago area i think it goes by a city by city basis, 9/22/06 is the only time i can remember when Chicago had all its sirens going for an actual warning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0m1BN4ZmAQ&mode=related&search=

The city itself does its own thing.....has its own EOC and handles it it's own way. That being said...the suburbs are broken up into districts (MABAS division 22, NORCOMM, WESCOMM, etc..) Usually when one division is under the gun (me being into public safety and having access to all the fire and police frequencies) will hear a dial tone and a code being dialed then within 20 seconds the whole "Divisions/Districts" sirens will be activated. Where I am from that means Oak Lawn, Evergreen Park, Worth, Alsip, and Burbank will be activated by Southwest Centrals command.

 

[Doug Lee]

As a follow up to John Diel's post:

Oklahoma has a strange form of county government. Each county has 3 districts represented by its own commissioner. The commissioners have limited executive powers, and they mainly supervise roads and county facilities in their districts. About their only county-wide control is over budgets of other departments.

Emergency Management at the county level is limited to areas that are unicorporated or not covered by a rural fire district. With limited finances, and sparse populations in large areas, no county will have a county-wide siren system.

The one metro county I am familiar with (Tulsa) has a "combined" EMA that covers Tulsa city and the unincoporated areas of the county. Their siren system covers only the city, but it is a sophisitcated system. They can test the sirens silently, but they do a sound test every week at noon on Wenesday. They can select which sirens to sound, so only the parts of the city that are under the gun get the warning. The system uses different tones depending on the type of warning - storm, flood, and nuclear attack (remember that Emergency Management grew out of the old Civil Defense). They do have a clearly defined policy about sounding the warnings.

Otherwise, sirens in Oklahoma depend on the towns, their budgets, and whoever has control or access to the button that sets them off.