(Spirit Lake)– As severe weather awareness week continues in Iowa, the focus today (Wed.) turns to tornadoes. Dickinson County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret tells us about the protocol for sounding sirens when a tornado warning is issued…
“If we have a tornado warning that’s issued we will activate the sirens for the portion of the county that’s affected by that warning. I always like to remind people of that because for example if the eastern part of the county is in a warning we’re not going to set off the sirens in Lake Park because it’s not affecting that part of the county. We try and activate them for just the areas necessary. So if there’s a tornado warning issued by the weather service we activate them. If one of our spotters or public safety official spots a tornado or a developing tornado we’ll activate them for that. The other criteria we have is for high winds. It’s difficult but if we know that there’s a storm coming in with high winds, generally 75 mph or greater, we’ll also activate the sirens for that because like I said before winds of that magnitude can do damage very similar to that of a tornado so we want to try to get the sirens going for that, too. It’s difficult because sometimes those winds come up right on top of you. You know maybe they weren’t that strong when the storm came through Lake Park but once it hits the lakes for whatever reason it picks up. You know it’s happened before. We know it happens and we can’t get the sirens sounded but if we know those types of winds are coming in we’re going to try and activate the sirens.”
Thursday’s topic is on preparedness and what we should be doing now, in advance of severe weather season.
