City’s federal signal-warning siren up and running

The federal signal-warning siren is up and running, officials said July 22.

The siren, which was recently installed right beside the Senior Sails Center building on Ridgeley Street, is a high-power, rotating, unidirectional 500-herze outdoor warning siren that offers and anechoic chamber-certified of 128 decibels. A test was recently performed on the siren by officials.

G&H Systems LLC’s Jerry Gehman spoke about the siren during the Atmore City Council meeting earlier this week.

“The siren will sound for 3 minutes when activated by the National Weather Service (NWS), or if there is a disaster,” Gehman said. “The city of Atmore saved money by repurposing the Motorola radio system that was recently replaced with the L3 Harris Communication System.”
Gehman said the siren acts as a communication device to the public for a warning scenario.

“This will provide the first-ever official warning system for both natural emergencies and other emergencies,” he said.

Gehman said Atmore Police Chief Chuck Brooks, the city’s safety officer, assisted in making the polygon of where the NWS’s notification alerts.

“That will automatically trigger the federal siren in case of an emergency in weather,” he said.

The polygon runs from Robinsonville down to Higway 4, west to Nokomis, north to Huxford and then across.

Gehman said the siren is electronically controlled, and triggers wails in 3-minute intervals.

For severe weather, the wail goes up and down for 3 minutes while rotating 360 degrees. For a disaster, the wait is continuous for 3 minutes while rotating 360 degrees.

Gehman said the siren works at 70 decibles at 7,500 feet. The radius is 15,000 feet, or 3 miles.

“The point is now we have a way of communicating no weather-related disasters,” he said, adding that city officials and the dispatcher have access to the siren and can activate it when necessary.

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