Official pushing for more tornado sirens in Huron County

NORWALK, Ohio (WJW) – Eight days after five tornados ripped through Northeast Ohio, Huron County’s emergency management director continues to work to try and improve the warning he can issue to residents.

Arthur Mead says where there once were more than 50 outdoor tornado sirens, there now are as few as 35.

“Flash forward, that was probably in the 80s and 90s, a lot of these sirens have come to the end of life, so every year we lose more and more sirens,” said Mead.

Huron County was hit by five confirmed tornados on the same day in July last year.

Ohio’s 63rd tornado this year, an F-0, touched down there at the end of June.

“Huron County broke the record for the most tornados before July 1. We had one here on like the 30th of June, I believe so. Way to go Huron, what a record to break. But yes, it happens out here a lot,” said Mead.

Tornado sirens are intended to only provide warning to those who are outdoors near them.

They have limitations, including the distance from which they can be heard, particularly given the wind direction.

Among many EMA directors, the expectation is that most people will get severe weather warnings from their cell phones or on their radio.

But Mead says in rural areas of Huron County, cell phone service may be unreliable.

“The outdoor sirens are a redundancy, if you will, for the technology, but down south they need those sirens because they don’t have access to cell phones. I still have dial up in my county,” said Mead.

“I have some huge farms down south where farmers and folks may be out in their fields doing their thing. They are not going to listen to their phones, but if they hear those sirens, they know that something is coming,” he added.

Mead says Huron County covers more than 500 square miles, most of which is agricultural. He says new tornado sirens may be cost prohibitive to some more rural villages.

“Each outdoor siren runs about $38,000 new and sometimes you can fix the sirens you have for a fee, but if a township is torn between spending $38,000 on a new siren or on a new vehicle that they may need, it’s a tough choice to make,” Mead said.

He is hoping to get grants or some other source of funding to help out.

But Mead says those have become more difficult to get because of the expectation that most everyone has access to modern technology.

“If everybody has blazing fast internet and we had 5G cell phone coverage across the county, this probably wouldn’t be a pertinent conversation, but we do not and I’m not alone. Sandusky County, Morrow County , Madison, all of those counties to the south, southwest of us have the same issues that we are having here,” said Mead.

The city of Norwalk does have 10 tornado sirens, but Megan Culler says she cannot always hear them.

“We live outside of town and so we don’t, you don’t necessarily hear them at our house, but we get weather alerts on our phones from the county,” said Culler.

However, Norwalk Fire Chief Dan Strayer believes the sirens still serve a very important purpose.

“I have come across some individuals still that do not have cell phones or they have flip phones that are not able to receive certain messages,” said Strayer.

Fire Chief Curt Stang of the Huron River Joint Fire District says they have two sirens, both in the village of Monroeville, to cover 75 square miles with three townships and just over 3,000 residents.

“The outlying areas don’t get much out of it. For some of them, the one is on the edge of the village and so to the east it does catch a few of the homes there. The one in the center of town obviously catches the majority of the village, but to the south and the west, we don’t have anything,” said Stang.

In Willard, where June’s tornado touched down, David Younce says he cannot rely on a tornado siren and cell service is a challenge as well.

“I try to (rely on cell phone warnings) but we don’t have very good cell service out there also, so we are kind of on our own watching the sky,” said Younce.

Beverly Mahi, 90, who lives in the unincorporated community of Havanna, does not even know how to operate a cell phone.

When asked how she gets her tornado warnings, she told FOX 8, “from a siren on tv,” or from her daughters or her son.

Mead says his office does everything it can with the technology it has to adequately warn as many Huron County residents as possible when there is any kind of a weather warning.

In the meantime, he will continue to do everything he can to try and find the funding he feels is important to get more tornado sirens in his county.

“My responsibility as EMA is to make sure my residents are protected and that’s what I’m trying to do here,” he said.

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