Newton Falls changes tornado warning plan

The city's siren will be tested Saturdays at noon.
By ERIC GROSSO
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
NEWTON FALLS -- The city is changing the way it warns citizens for tornadoes and it wants to spread the word as quickly as possible.
On Monday, City Manager Jack Haney announced changes to the city's tornado warning procedure to city council.
Haney said the weather siren will activate when a tornado warning is issued for southwestern Trumbull County or eastern Portage County. Preceding the siren will be a verbal warning telling residents to seek shelter.
If a valid visual sighting of a twister is made by one of the city's trained storm spotters or if Newton Falls is directly in the path of a tornado, the sirens will sound every five minutes until the threat is over.
The siren will be tested Saturdays at noon.
"If you hear the siren going off every few minutes, take shelter; the siren should act like an alarm clock," Haney said.
The city had used trained storm spotters for most of the last 40 years, said Police Chief Robert Carlson. A visual sighting by a storm spotter would call for the alarm siren, Carlson said.
Last month, Larry Sembach, Newton Falls Safety Force captain, notified council that the team of storm spotters was not large enough to have someone available at all times, leaving Haney to change the procedure for issuing tornado warnings.
Combination
Newton Falls previously did not use the countywide system, in which a tornado warning issued by the National Weather Service automatically triggers alarms, not only in the county where it was issued, but in neighboring counties as well.
Councilman Eric Thompson said the increased number of siren activations of the countywide system makes it hard for members to take the alarms seriously.
"Others get complacent with the sirens; we don't need that here," said Thompson last summer.
In the late 1980s, the city tried using the countywide system, but Carlson said the residents wanted the old system back after a few years. He said the protocol for using that system, including an initial warning siren and an all-clear siren, confused residents.
The new system announced Monday is a combination of both. Countywide warnings that are for tornadoes around Newton Falls will sound the alarms, but the city will still use trained storm spotters when available and dispatchers who continually monitor the weather and can send in reports quicker than most warning systems can, Carlson said.