With the severe weather lately, I was thinking about how we make ourselves aware of dangerous situations today and how that process has changed.

Many of us rely on the emergency siren alerts, which, for the most part, continue to be a reliable source. Of course, most all of us have read or heard about rare situations when the sirens did not go off, and a town was leveled by a tornado.

With the prevalence of cell phones today, a growing number of people rely on text message alerts for severe weather updates. This allows for more detailed information to be sent to mass groups of people quickly, assuming cell phone towers are not knocked out.

Some rely on social media, which experts say can be ineffective in delivering warnings due to the lack of reliable management or any vetting of what gets posted, resulting in incomplete, inaccurate or outdated information being shared.

The New York Times published an informative article entitled “Tornado Sirens, an Old Technology, Still Play a Vital Role” in 2016. In it, the reporter interviewed Logan Shelts, who, at the time, was the lead moderator of Air Raid Sirens, an online forum of educators and enthusiasts. Shelts said tornado sirens were an outgrowth of the Cold War and were installed to alert communities in case of a nuclear attack or an air raid.

Sirens were apparently first used to warn about tornadoes in 1970, but they were rarely set off to avoid panic. Today, sirens seem to have the opposite effect, with residents often ignoring them, assuming another “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” situation. According to the Times article, a ban on tornado warnings was in place from 1887 to 1938 because researchers believed using them would promote panic. The use of the word “tornado” in forecasts was even discouraged until 1950, when the Weather Bureau officially changed its policy. Today, weather forecasters seem to use words like “disastrous,” “dangerous” and “deadly” in seemingly every sentence. As a result, I fear we are falling even deeper into the “cry wolf” syndrome.

Meanwhile, experts in the Times article say sirens are “still important in out-of-the-way places such as golf courses, lakes and hiking trails, where cellphone service might be spotty or nonexistent.” As important as these sirens are, they should not be our sole source for severe weather alerts. Neither should text alerts. Or TV weather reports. And certainly not social media. The answer is all of the above and, most importantly, some common sense.

Have a watchful Wednesday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305
www.thedailyumbrella.com

See Shane Goodman's previous columns here.

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