The Marion County Board has approved the formation of a new committee to study a countywide multi-faceted weather warning system.
County Board Chair Debbie Smith created the committee and named Law Enforcement Committee Chair Steve Whritenour as its chair after he complained about the fragmentation of responsibility for the current tornado warning sirens where many consistently don’t work.
But Whritenour says the problem goes deeper than that because for many the warning sirens can’t be heard even if they are working.
“There are so many rural parts to our county even if every tornado siren was working they wouldn’t hear the sirens. So we have to do better to try to prepare all the citizens so they can get some kind of notification that bad weather is coming. If it’s not through a siren, then a phone call, email or text message; some kind of warning about severe weather.”
Whritenour feels the solution is a hybrid system that would still utilize at least some of the sirens, but would have other options as well. He doesn’t look at the improvements as a lengthy project.
“Certain systems that are out there today that do have a notification system in place, it’s just getting all the entities on board and coming up with a plan as a county as a whole instead of just an individual city or township.”
Whritenour doesn’t feel it’s in the best interest for every city and county to maintain their own sirens. Both Salem and Centralia have inoperable sirens. An effort has been underway this week to get many of the sirens in the smaller communities once again operational.
Whritenour wants to have an initial meeting of the new county board committee in July and an August meeting with all those involved in providing warning services in August.
