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Be Safe

J. Robby Westbrook, MS, CEM®
Director, Cherokee Sheriff's Office Division of Emergency Management

 Policy related to outdoor warning siren activation.

First, we only have 59 siren sites and they do not cover the entire county. Secondly, most homes and buildings are designed to keep sounds out, thus outdoor warning sirens are most useful for alerting people who are outside their home, in parks, or shopping areas. While outdoor sirens are an important part of the overall warning system they should never be considered your primary means of receiving tornado warnings at home or work. NOAA All Hazards Radio is the best way to receive a warning and the details associated with that warning.

Our policy calls for the activation of outdoor warning sirens under the following conditions:

1. A tornado warning is issued for Cherokee County.
2. A tornado is sighted by a trained spotter or public safety official.
3. A Severe Thunderstorm warning is issued and within the text of the warning winds are forecast to be greater than 70 MPH.

When activated the sirens will sound for 3 minutes. When the sirens stop it does not mean the danger is over. There is also only one tone that will be sounded.

There will be no all clear signal provided by the sirens.

A great amount of study has been conducted related to all clear signals and different tones being used to signal all clear messages and the results of those studies found that using different signals is very confusing.

When a siren sounds you should move indoors to a safe structure and tune to local radio, TV or NOAA weather radio for more information. Hopefully you can do this from your safe room. If the weather becomes threatening at your location and a warning has not been issued don’t wait take cover.

One last note, if the sirens sound for the 3 minutes and then sound again a few minutes or hours later it is not an all clear. It means that a new threat has been detected and that you should follow the instructions above once again.

During this mornings storms Cherokee County was placed under a severe thunderstorm warning. We received a message from the National Weather Service via chat that Cherokee County could experience winds up to 80 MPH. At that time we activated the outdoor warning sirens following our policy. This action allowed dozens of people who were on walking tracks in parks across the county to seek shelter ahead of the storm. Fortunately, the storms weaken dramatically and we did not see the wide spread damage that occurred just a few miles to our west in Floyd and Gordon counties.

I hope this was helpful and if we can be of any additional service please let me know.