Official: Tornado-alert system isn’t flawless

Staff report

WARREN

The system of warning people of possible tornadoes is not perfect, but it does a good job of alerting people that they need additional information, said Linda Beil, director of the Trumbull County Emergency Management Agency.

Trumbull County has been under tornado warnings three times in the past month — twice in 14 hours over the weekend — none of which turned out to be a real tornado.

That doesn’t mean residents should ignore the warning coming from those 74 sirens throughout the county, she said.

In the case of the warning issued about 5 a.m. Sunday, the sirens alerted some people to wake up and check weather reports, Beil said, which may have saved lives in the event of a real emergency.

A check of the weather can inform someone whether volatile weather poses a danger to his home and family and whether a trip to the basement is warranted, she said.

There are a few flaws in the system, however.

For one, the temperature was high Sunday morning, and that probably caused a lot of people to turn on air conditioning and close the windows, which might have prevented some from hearing the sirens, she said.

The best alternative for those people is a weather monitor/radio with battery backup, which would provide a tornado-warning alert inside a home equipped with such a monitor, Beil said.

Another problem is that in three cases, alarms may not have sounded last weekend, even though the county 911 operation activated sirens in all areas of the county under its control and advised the dispatching operations in Warren, Niles, Hubbard, Liberty, Girard and Lordstown to activate their sirens.

Beil has not heard from officials in Vernon, Bloomfield and Farmington townships, but the county 911’s computer system indicated that their sirens did not work.

It is likely that $400 backup batteries in the 5-year-old sirens may need to be replaced, Beil said.

Though the county secured grant money to buy the sirens, it is the townships’ responsibility to maintain them, she added.

Beil said she doesn’t know what caused the National Weather Service to issue a tornado warning Sunday morning, but the Saturday afternoon warning was issued because the Windham fire chief spotted a funnel cloud heading toward Newton Falls.