Spring brings sunshine, warmer temps, rain, and the return of severe storms.

With severe storms in the area the last few weeks, which were severe enough for the city’s tornado/outdoor warning sirens to sound off, here is information regarding storms and sirens.

Outdoor warning sirens are not designed to be heard indoors, but rather they are primarily intended to alert people who are outside to seek shelter and obtain additional information, according to Steve Braun, Grant County Emergency Management Director.

Sirens are only one part of a warning system. When outdoor sirens are heard, people should go indoors and tune to local media to get more information.

Braun did say that some communities choose to “over-build” their systems so sirens can be heard inside certain structures, factors like insulation, building construction, HVAC systems, and background noise (TVs, appliances, etc.) can significantly reduce or completely block the sound indoors.

Braun went on to explain the number of sirens and the level of coverage desired is ultimately the city’s decision. All warning sirens in Grant County are owned by the local municipalities—the county doesn’t own or maintain any warning sirens.

So in summary, sirens should not be relied upon as the primary method for receiving alerts inside a home, especially overnight.

Braun did give some more “reliable ways” to receive alerts indoors:

• NOAA Weather Radios remain one of the most dependable alerting methods.
• Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are automatically sent to mobile devices for life-threatening hazards such as Tornado Warnings.
• CodeRED, which Grant County uses, provides weather and emergency alerts to residents who register. Residents can sign up for free by texting GRANTWIALERTS to 24639 or by visiting: https://accountportal.onsolve.net/grantcountywinotifications

When asked who exactly makes the call to sound off a tornado siren, Braun explained that outdoor warning sirens across Grant County are manually activated at the Grant County Dispatch Center in Lancaster.

He gave last week’s storms as an example stating, “For last week’s tornado warning, the decision to activate the sirens was made based on real-time weather information, with concurrence between myself and the Fennimore Fire Chief. At the time of the warning, the Fennimore Fire Department was already deployed and watching the storm.”

Fennimore’s two warning sirens, installed in 2017, are located at the corner of Madison Street and 6th Street, near the Railroad Museum, and on Garfield Street between 14th and 16th Streets, near the southeast corner of the city.