Officials worry Dickinson sirens are ‘crying wolf’
September 9, 2011 at 7:00 pm in The Dickinson Press
There are concerns from Dickinson citizens that the outdoor warning sirens have been sounding too much, City Commissioner Carson Steiner said, and officials are worried it is desensitizing the public.
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So glad that this has been brought up! A few weeks ago I was woken up by thunder and as I was trying to fall back to sleep I realized I heard another noise…a siren. I jumped out of bed, grabbed socks and my cell phone and was calling my mom next door to have her come help me get my 10 month old to go to her house where they have a basement. As I’m gathering up bottles, formula, diapers, shoes and extra clothes she comes over, on the phone with Stark County Sheriff. We both get weather alerts to our phones, and neither of us had heard anything about a tornado. We didn’t know that the sirens go off for ‘severe’ thunderstorms, because we have experienced plenty of those in our time in North Dakota and have only heard sirens if there was a tornado threat. Let me tell you, I am sure glad that I didn’t wake my baby up at 1am for a thunderstorm that I would hardly have called ‘severe’. When this same thing happened a week or so later, I checked the weather channel, saw there were no tornado watches and warnings, and went about my business.
I think most people understand what to do in a thunderstorm. The sirens for a thunderstorm are complete overkill. If someone is stupid enough to go play in a hail storm, well then they deserve what is coming to them.
Please Stark County, follow the lead of the rest of the nation. A little thunder and lightening is no cause to wake people up at 1am with emergency sirens!
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