Citizens of Laurie discovered that two of their four tornado sirens failed to sound off during some recent severe storms.
On Sunday July 11th the national weather service issued a tornado warning for Morgan County at which Morgan County Emergency Management turned on the sirens to warn area residents. Director Ed Young says they’re still investigating.
“I don’t know why they didn’t go off. They had everything that indicates they should have went off but because of the time constraints I’ve got for testing, I haven’t been able to test them all yet because we’re still working,” says Young.
According to Young only one siren in the Laurie area has back up batteries. In the case that the electricity fails near the sirens, only that one siren would sound.
“Of the four sirens we have in town, only one of them has back up batteries. The five we’re going to have a this point only one will have back-up batteries and that’s the one that came from Morgan County Emergency Management.”
The city of Laurie is almost ready to start the bidding on their fifth siren coming this week.
“We have an add that should be in this weeks paper to advertise for the fifth siren so that we can open up those bids August 9th and present a recommendation to the board on which siren to go ahead and get on the August 11th board meeting.”
This fifth siren would be paid for by a special grant and some area local money.
“It will be paid for with a USDA grant for development and its 55% them and we have to pay 45% out of local money.”
KRMS will have more details after the investigation has been completed.
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