Panama City Beach officials scratch idea of tornado sirens

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. ( WMBB ) – A tornado siren system will not be coming to Panama City Beach, anytime soon. City council members heard from Fire Chief Ray Morgan about several possible systems.

Morgan discussed systems that play an alert noise, some that broadcast messages, and alternatives like weather radios. Council members expressed concerns about the effectiveness of sirens and the ability to hear them inside of buildings.

They dropped the siren idea and are pursuing grants to provide residents with weather radios.

“The National Weather Service is going to push out weather alerts through your phone automatically without even having to sign up so you have that option,” Morgan said. “Then we want you to sign up for Alert Bay and that’s just a redundancy in it and that also gets very specific to our area and puts out a lot of good information outside of just weather. And then when you’re at home, having a weather radio also is another layer of protection to that.”

Council members instructed staff to start looking for grants and funding sources to pay for weather radios.

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