Warning sirens effective

[ginbot86]

I'm not too sure, but I heard that Edmonton has tornado sirens since they got hit by a hard one years ago. Gotta go there and check.

[Rory Buszka]

The only language those governments understand is lawsuits.

If you were outdoors where many people gather and there was no warning of a tornado in your area, that alone is enough reason to sue. You should be livid that your local government, which undertakes to use mass-notification systems to warn its constituents of impending weather threats, was negligent in providing a system that uses proven technology to deliver weather warnings outdoors.

I believe there needs to be an 'outdoor warning consortium' to (a) fill in the gaps left by FEMA's own research into the effectiveness of outdoor warning systems, (b) educate state and local emergency planners on the benefits and advantages of wide-area audible alerting of people outdoors when compared to competing methods such as "Reverse 911" and all-hazard weather radios, and (c) to advise legal inquiries into the effectiveness of outdoor warning systems and the responsibilities of state and local governments in providing this type of audible warning.

Here's an example of how such a consortium could help: One major question that isn't being currently asked is whether voice transmissions can be intelligible over long distances where reverberation times can be longer than 1 second, or the arrival times of sound from multiple siren stations can differ by more than 1 second. Right now, acoustical science is taking a back seat to salesmanship when the effectiveness of voice warnings vs. tone warnings is considered. An outdoor warning 'consortium' could conduct surveys to determine whether the general public is aware of audible outdoor warnings for weather emergencies, and whether the voice alerts are intelligible in the areas that already use them.