🚀 go-pugleaf

I live in a small community, that should be said first.  The county
seat, Petersburg, has a population of less than 5,000.  Petersburg was
devastated by an F4 tornado on June 2, 1990, two months and one day
before my ninth birthday.  After the disaster, FEMA money was used to
purchase a spectacular siren/PA system for the city, but the rest of the
county was (and still is) sorely neglected.  Winslow, the second largest
town, had a small siren that pulls double- duty between water line
breaks and severe weather.  We at the Independent Weather Service/Pike
County Skywarn received a siren that had formerly been used for blast
warnings at a nearby surface coal mine.  The siren can be heard indoors
over nearly a 10 mile radius.  We now use our siren for weather warnings
(actually, we haven't had to use it yet, just tests), and are working on
acquiring two more like sirens for the town.  Last week, the existing
siren (not ours, we didn't have it yet) was set off during a Severe
Thunderstorm Warning.  People in Winslow were lined up on the streets
like it was a parade trying to find out where the water break was!  PC
Skywarn Director Chris Richardson and I spent over 20 precious minutes
convincing the idiots to take cover.  Our siren sounds COMPLETELY
different than the former town siren, and only a deaf person couldn't
tell the difference.  We also plan to build and operate a countywide
siren/PA system (still working on funding for that as well as our FM
repeater) to alert people who live in less accessible (translate: out in
the boondocks) parts of the county.  In conclusion, I would like to say
that sirens CAN be an effective warning tool, but only if citizens know
what the siren means and have the sense to heed the warning.

   Another siren story you might find interesting: Otwell, a greasy spot
on the road in Pike County, has a very small Volunteer Fire Department
with two fire trucks.  The former chief, upon learning of a weather
warning, would dispatch both vehicles to the center of the town, where
they would each drive in opposite directions with the sirens blaring.
The department was small enough that when there was a fire, both trucks
would ALWAYS go to the same place.  When citizens saw the trucks drive
in opposite directions, or heard the sirens getting further apart from
each other, they knew to take cover.  Unfortunately, the current Chief
is not as resourceful as the old one...  He, I think, could care less if
the town blew away as long as it wasn't destroyed by fire!

Jason Barr
Pike County Skywarn
Weather 11

Pike County, Indiana Skywarn
by authorization of the National Weather Service in Paducah, KY

skywarnpc@hotmail.com
http://members.tripod.com/~pcskywarn


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