The wail of a siren has long been synonymous with tornado season. It's an icon, so much so that many people wait to hear it before heading to their basements for cover.
But they might want to re-evaluate their emergency plans:
• Many areas are out of range of warning sirens. Most of the areas not covered are rural, but coverage is also spotty in some highly populated areas.
• Siren components routinely fail.
• Even under ideal conditions, sirens aren't designed to be heard inside buildings or vehicles, much less to be loud enough to wake a person at night. In fact, these days, home weather radios and automatic phone alerts from 911 centers are the more reliable notification methods.
Yet sirens are the signal many people listen for.
Scott Kaluza can recall a night in June 2008 when he woke to a fierce storm raging. He considered heading to safety, but because he couldn't hear any sirens, he stayed put.
In fact, in the eight years Kaluza has lived in the Ardmore East neighborhood of La Vista, just north of 72nd Street and Giles Road, not once has he gone to the basement. He's never heard sirens.
Similar pockets of poor coverage aren't uncommon in the Omaha metropolitan area. A World-Herald analysis shows that about 16,000 residents in Council Bluffs, Douglas and Sarpy Counties live more than 5,000 feet from the nearest siren, at the farthest reaches of the strongest devices.
Areas at 96th and Pacific Streets in Omaha, just south of the recycling center in Council Bluffs and on the eastern edge of La Vista are just a few examples of areas on the outskirts of siren coverage.
Factor in wind, hills, tall buildings and traffic noise, and the number of people who might have difficulty hearing the sirens surely is higher.
Covering 100 percent of people is practically impossible, said Council Bluffs Fire Chief Alan Byers. Cities keep growing, making siren installation a constant game of catch-up.
Unlike Pottawattamie County and Sarpy County, which leave siren coverage up to cities and towns, Douglas County has jurisdiction over all sirens within its boundaries, said Emergency Management Director Paul Johnson. It requires developers to install sirens within 30 days of residents moving in.
But even with coverage in most areas, people shouldn't rely on the system, Johnson said.
“You don't guarantee effectiveness — that's the bottom line,” he said.
This year alone, six of the county's 116 sirens have failed to sound for one reason or another. That failure rate appears to be the norm. Lancaster County has had six failures for its 117 sirens, and Council Bluffs has had one of its 19 go down.
Other counties checked couldn't report the number of siren failures this year. That's because siren policy is left up to local governments, resulting in a patchwork of rules created by the counties, cities, SIDs or even individual housing developments.
Bill Pook is all too familiar with the variations in siren policy. He oversees emergency management for Region 5/6, which includes Burt, Dodge and Washington Counties. He helps communities decide how many sirens they need.
But with the cost of new sirens hovering at about $20,000 apiece, some choose to erect fewer than he recommends.
Another problem is that each area sets its own rules about when the sirens sound. Some communities sound them every day at noon, or when school lets out, or at dinnertime.
“There's some communities that will sound it three, four, maybe even five times a day. It's deep-rooted in tradition,” Pook said. “That's diluted the significance.”
Leaving control up to local governments can result in serious policy gaps. Sarpy County leaves installation and maintenance in the hands of communities. But the county is responsible for testing the sirens and mapping coverage, said Larry Lavelle, Sarpy County's emergency management director.
No mechanism is in place to tell cities when neighborhoods aren't covered. And when a siren fails a test, the county can't require repairs.
“We do a gentle reminder, but we don't have a hammer,” Lavelle said.
Such inconsistencies no longer happen in Lancaster County, said Emergency Management Director Doug Ahlberg.
Over the past decade, he has managed to move siren control from the community level to the county. The effort has paid off.
Populated areas of the county are entirely covered, he said. And communities that used to sound sirens for non-emergency purposes no longer do so.
“By us owning them, there is no confusion in anybody's mind that when they go off, they go off for a reason,” he said. “And it isn't to tell them it's 12 o'clock.”
The communities that previously maintained sirens saw the benefit of moving control to the county.
Perhaps the sirens' biggest limitation, though, is that they are not meant for the purpose most people think they serve.
Sirens are designed only to be heard outdoors.
The framework of the siren system can be traced to the 1930s and 1940s, Pook said. In those days, people slept with their windows open because there was no air conditioning. Ambient noise such as traffic was nowhere near the level it is today, and the sirens could be heard indoors.
Now?
“If they were loud enough to penetrate homes, they would be blaring,” he said. “They would be an outrageous noise.”
The best way to stay aware of weather warnings is to invest in a NOAA weather radio, said Pook, who has been lobbying for weather radios to be required in all newly constructed homes, just as smoke detectors are now.
The idea has yet to gain traction in Nebraska, and the Iowa Department of Emergency Management was unaware of any such legislation in the works. However, Indiana recently passed a similar law, requiring weather radios in all new mobile homes.
Tornado sirens clearly save lives. In the Omaha tornado of 1975, sirens warned people to head for cover just in time. The storm ripped a nine-mile path through the city and killed three people, but the toll could have been much higher.
That history is probably part of the reason communities continue to bear the cost of a strong siren system. Repairs and maintenance in Douglas County typically run about $25,000 a year and have reached as high as $75,000.
Other notification methods are becoming more widespread. In addition to the weather radios, more emergency management departments are making use of reverse 911 systems, which can provide public phone notification during disasters.
Sirens still serve a valuable function and will probably stick around for a long time.
“They cover wide areas and attract the attention of people,” Pook said. “We don't diminish the use of sirens. We just recognize the limitations.”
Contact the writer:
444-3144, matt.wynn@owh.com
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