Whirlwind of confusion results from warning siren setup

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Every time there is a tornado warning in Mobile County nearly fifty sirens wail. But in such a large county, many folks who hear the sirens are nowhere near the severe weather. Many wonder if there’s a solution that could give more exact warnings.

MOBILE COUNTY SIRENS ALWAYS WARNING

If you live in Mobile County, you’ve probably heard the wailing of the warning sirens.

They are all connected to the same switch, so they all go off with every tornado warning. But in a county nearly the size of Rhode Island you may not be anywhere close to the rough weather, which happened again Sunday night.

 The National Weather Service issues tornado warnings in storm-specific polygon. Often those warnings, as in this case, affect a small part of the county.

Deputy Director of the Mobile County EMA Mike Evans said, “The current policy is we sound all of them when we go under a tornado warning in Mobile County.”

 Evans said he has heard complaints about the sirens, but setting them off in only specific areas would take an entirely new system.

“We’ve looked at a couple of those solutions, and it would be pretty expensive to sound those alarms based on the polygons.”

He said a major expense of a new system would be replacing old sirens. He said many of them simply couldn’t be retrofitted and would have to be replaced at a cost of $30,000 to $100,000 apiece. He said covering the whole county with such a system could cost millions.

21 ^ST CENTURY WARNINGS

 Evans said the best solution may be to move away from the sirens to a technology that may be right in your pocket.

 “There’s some programs that directly link up to smart phones that will give you a warning if you sign up for it. It has texting capabilities, email capabilities; it will give you a phone call,” Evans told us.

For some though, the inconvenience of the sirens is worth piece of mind. Robert Todd, who lives less than a block from the siren at Lusher Park in Mobile, said.

“I’d rather have it go off. I really would, because that’s what it’s there for. It’s there to get me up, for my safety, my friends’ safety and the neighborhood.”

SPECIFIC INFORMATION RIGHT HERE

 If you hear the sirens go inside and turn on FOX10 News or visit Fox10tv.com. We’ll have specific information scrolling on your screen so you can see if it’s your neighborhood that is being affected.