Tornado Drill To Highlight Severe Weather Awareness Week In Iowa
Tornado Drill To Highlight Severe Weather Awareness Week In Iowa
March 22, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Spirit Lake)– Severe Weather Awareness Week is underway in Iowa. Wednesday, a statewide tornado drill will be held, during which sirens in most counties will sound. Dickinson County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret says it’s important to point those sirens are intended to serve as OUT door warning systems ONLY…
“It seems like after every storm where we have to activate those sirens somebody will call and say I couldn’t hear those sirens in my house, and I have to explain just what you said there, that they are meant to be outdoor warning sirens. That’s kind of why we, I try to call them outdoor warning sirens as opposed to tornado sirens because we activate them more for tornadoes and then just as we were talking about they’re meant only to be heard outdoors. So yeah, we do have an extensive network of sirens, about three dozen sirens in the county, and, you know, we do sound them like I said for tornadoes and also if we have thunderstorms coming in that we believe are going to have winds, you know, at 75 mph or greater is kind of our threshold. So we do activate them, like I said, for more than just tornadoes.”
Ehret encourages everyone to participate in Wednesday’s drill…
“Homes and in businesses and in schools, I hope everybody will just take, you know, it will take a quick five, ten minutes out of your day to practice your drill and practice your plan and that’s really critical if you do have a plan, because when you test it that’s when you find out where your weaknesses are and the places you need to improve, so it just makes your plan that much stronger.”
The drill is scheduled for 10:00 am Wednesday but Ehret says it will be postponed to Thursday in the event of threatening weather.
