By Devyn Lyon, FOX23.com News Staff
Over the last two months, multiple outdoor warning sirens have failed or had delayed alerts during severe weather.
In the Tulsa area, there’s over one hundred sirens but rural parts of the state have less coverage and one siren going down can be critical.
“Man, we’re excited it’s working. This is a historic moment for this community right here in Twin Hills,” said Jeffrey Moore, Director of Okmulgee County Emergency Management.
Okmulgee County tested its new solar powered outdoor warning siren, one of six that they’re installing across the county.
“The school is right here, that’s why we picked this location so that the kids and teachers would have the extra warning if something popped up.”
Its outdoor warning sirens that are supposed to warn you in severe weather alerts such as tornadoes.
Almost all of the sirens that had failures or delays in the last two months were due to power outages interrupting the activation signal.
Kiowa was the most recent, leaving first responders to manually spot storms and alert people who live there.
“The tornado was basically on top of us before we tried to activate,” said Kiowa Police Chief Jess Wilson.
Every faulty siren so far has been fixed, including in Kiowa. The new ones in Okmulgee County are solar powered in hopes of avoiding issues related to power outages.
“We’re excited. As you can see, they’re on steel poles. We wanted durability,” said Moore. “They’re set off two ways: One is a radio signal that comes out from our emergency operation system, and at the same time it sends a cellular signal as a backup. We can also set them off manually.”
Click here to watch the full interview with Jeffrey Moore.
“The sirens we have are working great, for the most part they’re fairly new — within the last few decades. There was a grant about three years ago to replace sirens and put new ones in, so we have very good coverage within the Tulsa area,’ said Tulsa County Emergency Management Director Bill Smiley.
Tulsa County has a lot more overlap, as one of the more populated counties in the state. Smiley said maintenance is key.
“We have a maintenance shop that works tirelessly to make sure that the sirens are maintained and up to date,” said Smiley. “They’re maintained by the City of Tulsa.”
Click here to watch the full interview with Bill Smiley.
Emergency Management directors over both rural and urban parts of the state said you need more than one way to be weather aware.
Experts want you to have a backup plan when those sirens don’t work, such as the FOX23 Severe Weather App or a weather radio that will help you stay prepared.
