(Spirit Lake)– A new procedure has been put into place for testing some outdoor warning sirens in Dickinson County. Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret tells KUOO news the change effects some sirens that recently received some technology upgrades…
“The county and the cities of Orleans, Superior and Terril completed some upgrades to their sirens late last year. And what that does is it, our current sirens are kind of just a one way system. We send out a set of tones and they go off and that’s it. The new system is more of a two way system, so the controller will send a signal to the siren and then the siren will talk back. So we can do a daily test, basically, of those sirens and test the components and make sure everything’s working and in good order. And then another thing we can do is, so on Wednesdays with those sirens instead of doing the full test, we’re going to do what’s called a growl test, which means it just starts the siren up just briefly, enough to turn the head and make a little bit of sound. That’s enough to test the system to know that those components are in working order, so.”
Ehret says those sirens are now only fully tested once a month as a result. He says the other sirens that do not have the upgrades are still fully tested every week…
“The sirens that weren’t upgraded in Spirit Lake, Okoboji, Arnolds Park, Milford and West Okoboji and Lake Park, those will still be tested on Wednesdays at noon just like we have in past years.”
On somewhat of a related note, next week is “Severe Weather Awareness Week” in Iowa. A special severe weather topic will be featured each day. We’ll have much more on that throughout the week next week.
