Q: The tornado sirens once again wailed recently, warning the city when the threat was actually to the south of Mankato and moving east. There is nothing wrong with being overly cautious about severe weather conditions, but I suspect many people might be ignoring the siren or at minimum seeking localized information from the National Weather Service as I do. The overuse of sirens could inadvertently be putting residents at risk. Is it possible to divide Blue Earth County into quadrants for the purpose of tornado siren warnings? Who is responsible for flipping the switch?
A: “It’s a good question,” said Capt. Paul Barta of the Blue Earth Co. Sheriff’s Office.
As someone who has been involved in emergency management for years, Barta also has heard it often. People think it’s silly when sirens are sounded in Mapleton or Amboy, despite clear skies, just because a dangerous thunderstorm is rolling toward Mankato nearly 20 miles away. And folks in Mankato wonder why they are subjected to the whine of sirens if the worrisome weather is just clipping the southern edge of Blue Earth County and moving away from the county’s biggest city.
As logical as those concerns might be, the solutions are not simple, said Barta, suggesting a meeting at the Sheriff’s Office for a broader explanation with input from Chief Deputy Jeremy Brennan and Emergency Management Director Eric Weller. The invitation sort of threw Ask Us Guy for a loop, since people generally try to answer his questions as quickly a possible so that he will just go away.
But Barta, Brennan and Weller clearly take the emergency warning system seriously and welcomed a chance to do a little public education.
“There’s not a week that goes by that the three of us don’t say the word ‘siren,’” Weller said after the trio spent 45 minutes summarizing the range, and complexity, of all of the initiatives underway to modernize and improve the warning system.
As for the reader’s question about “Who is responsible for flipping the switch,” that’s one answer that’s simple.
“We have the responsibility of pushing the button to activate the sirens,” Weller said.
Specifically, it’s the Communications Division of the Sheriff’s Office — the folks who work 24/7/365 answering 911 calls, dispatching emergency responders, communicating with deputies in the field and handling notifications and alerts from other law enforcement agencies.
When it come to weather, the 911 dispatch center is expected to activate the sirens in Blue Earth County (and in North Mankato) when there’s an imminent threat of tornadoes or winds in excess of 70 mph — usually as determined by the National Weather Service. As the system now operates, that means all the sirens go off if there’s a weather warning issued anywhere in the county.
“It’s everything or it’s nothing,” Weller said.
There are multiple reasons for that, including that the existing sirens, which are financed by towns and townships, vary widely in their sophistication.
“I think we have some sirens that are damn near 40 years old,” Weller said.
Changes in how the devices are activated could probably be set up so that sirens are triggered in some towns but not others. The reader suggested dividing the county into quadrants and only activating the sirens in that quarter of the county where a storm is present or approaching. People also have suggested splitting the county into northern and southern halves for storm warnings.
But those are not really a workable solution for a few reasons, according to Barta and Brennan.
First, storm fronts move fast and dangerous cells can intensify quickly. Plus, in this part of the country, severe summertime storms almost always move west to east and they also have a tendency to go from southwest to northeast. So there’s a good chance a dangerous storm is going to spill over across any arbitrary lines set up in the county anyway.
Beyond that, dispatchers have a lot to handle already between their various duties. Should they be asked to interpret National Weather Service expectations of where a storm is headed, whether it is strengthening or dissipating, maybe factor in the analysis of local forecasters such as KEYC’s Shawn Cable as they analyze the radar during live storm reports?
“Plus the other calls they’re getting — domestics, traffic stops,” Barta said. “The normal business doesn’t stop.”
In addition, there are inevitably 911 calls from citizens who believe they’re seeing a twister.
“It happens every time,” Barta said. “We get reports of rotation, tornadoes on the ground. We have well-intentioned people reporting tornadoes that just aren’t there.”
So it’s probably not fair to ask a dispatcher to make the potentially life-and-death decisions about when, where and whether to set off the warning sirens. Instead, the protocol is to trigger the sirens when the NWS issues a warning for the county.
(There does appear to be a technological solution, and the Sheriff’s Office is analyzing the possibility of implementation. It’s a complicated and potentially expensive fix, however — enough so that it will have to wait for next week’s Ask Us column.)
In the meantime, area residents are asked to rethink the purpose of the sirens.
The reader’s concern that overuse of the sirens is prompting people to ignore them is basically the proverbial “boy who cried wolf” scenario. That may be a concern, but not so much for people who understand the point of siren.
The objective isn’t to get people to immediately dash to the basement and cover their ears. The sirens are actually intended to prompt folks to do exactly what the reader says he is doing: seeking localized information from the National Weather Service.
“That’s what they’re made for,” Brennan said, to advise people to “go get more information.”
Specifically, they’re made for people who are outdoors when the sirens sound. People having summertime fun in their yards or parks, doing outside chores, attending a youth ballgame or getting exercise often don’t have their phones or aren’t paying attention to them.
The siren is a simple device that’s designed to make a loud, distinct sound that breaks through distractions and tells people it’s time to pull out the smartphone, turn on local radio or TV or listen to a weather radio.
Which, by the way, is the reason that small towns are advised by emergency management professionals to discontinue the tradition of blowing a “noon whistle” or signaling the start of the 10 p.m. youth curfew with the town siren.
Those traditional daily siren calls in small towns can be misinterpreted by visitors to a community. And they could cause locals to ignore a storm warning, wrongly assuming it’s the routine daily activation of the siren, if a tornado happens to be approaching at noon or at curfew time.
Contact Ask Us at The Free Press, 418 S. Second St., Mankato, MN 56001. Call Mark Fischenich at 344-6321 or email your question to mfischenich@mankatofreepress.com; put Ask Us in the subject line.
