Fire Chief: Don’t depend on warning sirens when you’re indoors

By Randy Bell

After an EF-1 tornado barreled through Clinton on March 25, some residents complained the City’s warning sirens were slow to sound the alarm. Fire Chief Jeff Blackledge admits there was a problem.

“We actually had a computer glitch the night that tornado came through,” Blackledge says. “So, we were a little delayed in getting the sirens set off.”

Blackledge says an upgrade is planned, including a new computer, software and components to improve the operation of the City’s twenty-two sirens.

The chief also got permission from the Board of Aldermen on April 2 to spend rebate money from the purchase of a new Fire Department generator to repair an electronic siren on the Mississippi College campus. Blackledge says getting it fixed is a priority, because he wants to temporarily remove another siren located on the 80/20 Project construction site near the college—but he can’t do that until the siren on campus is repaired, because it would leave the college and downtown Clinton without siren coverage.

The chief says the siren in the construction area needs to be taken down until work on the infrastructure is finished.

“We sure don’t want to put it in a spot [where] they decide to put a road,” he told the Board.

Clintonians who’ve signed up for the City’s CodeRED alert system received last month’s tornado warning quickly.

“I was getting phone calls from people [saying] ‘Hey, our sirens aren’t going off.’ But [they] got CodeRED,” the chief noted.

With Mississippi now in the heart of its spring tornado season, Blackledge is reminding the public that warning sirens, even when they’re working properly, are not intended to alert people when they’re indoors. He says modern homes are built to be more airtight to promote efficient heating and cooling, but that makes it harder for the sirens to be heard indoors.

“Even sound doesn’t penetrate,” the chief says – and that’s why CodeRED is so important.

“If you haven’t signed up for it, please go to ClintonMS.org and, in the search box, you can type in ‘Code Red,’” Blackledge told the Board and the audience watching the meeting on Facebook. Look under “results” for the words “Code Red,” click one of the results, and it will navigate to the CodeRED page. Alternately, users can select “Services” from the menu bar at the top of the page, then choose “Fire Department.” The CodeRED signup link is on the Fire Department web page.

“You can sign up [to be alerted] on your cellphone [and/or] your house phone. You can set it if you want all of the warnings, or just tornado warnings or flash flood warnings.”

CodeRED is a 24/7 emergency alert system, which also can use email for severe weather and evacuation notifications. There’s also a CodeRED mobile app, which provides additional access to emergency notifications and general information directly from a smartphone.

To sign up for CodeRed, visit ClintonMS.org/fire-department.