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City fixes six sirens that failed during recent test
Published 12:26pm Monday, April 18, 2011Work was done on Friday to temporarily restore all of Fergus Falls’ severe weather sirens to working order after a Thursday test revealed that six of the eight sirens did not go off when signaled.
“They are up for the weekend,” said Captain Steve Adams of the city’s police department. “If we need them, they’ll go on.”
The problem, Adams explained, is that the sirens are all triggered by radio signals which originate from phone lines in the Otter Tail County Dispatch Center at the county courthouse. There is an interference in one of the signals.
“We’ve isolated (the interference) to an area that we have bypassed,” said Adams. He added that further maintenance would be done in the coming week to restore the system to normal.
The city normally tests the sirens on the first Wednesday of every month.
“The first Wednesday of April we knew there was a problem, and we thought it was fixed,” Adams said. However, during a special test on Thursday as part of Severe Weather Awareness week, police found that the problem still remained.
“There’s eight (sirens) strategically placed around the city to cover as much of the city as possible,” Adams explained. “There’s quite a bit of overlap.”
In the event that the sirens do not work, Adams said public safety has other ways to alert residents to severe weather.
“We can break into the various public broadcast systems,” he said, including local TV and radio stations. They can also broadcast alerts over National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “weather radio.”
Tags: Fergus Falls Police Department, weather
this is some thing that shouldnt work from time to time its not a matter of safty or anything.why should any one be held accountable for safty.