Siren Failure in Olmsted County

[tboltkid520]

Last Thursday, when Minnesota was getting pelted with Tornadoes and Severe weather, a Tornado hit Northwest Rochester, MN. The storm cell that came into Rochester had a long history of producing Tornadoes in Dodge and Mower Counties, and when the cell came into Rochester a Severe T-Storm Warning was issued, the sirens however were activated in Rochester because of a report form a spotter confirming 70+ MPH winds. The news at the time, which was covering the storm, explained that they didn't know why they were activated The sirens in the Northwest area of Rochester did not activate, and within a few minutes, an area in Northwest Roch had been torn up by a tornado that formed out of nowhere, of course.

Post Bulletin, our local newspaper, wrote an article explaining that there was a software glitch and that outdoor sirens are, again, an outdoor warning device and not to be relied upon indoors.

http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager ... 2&a=458014

It irks me that reading the few comments on the article, people blame the person in charge of activating them for all of the problems. Software is never flawless, and it certainly wasn't operator error. On the other hand, it goes to show that even though Olmsted tests their sirens weekly and continuously monitors them, even the most comprehensive system can fail.

[anepstad]

I have agree don't like seen people blame our EOC director its not his fault I mean he might have not sounded them because the warning that was issued for our County only said 60 mph wind but with the wind report in rock dell help for sirens to used

[anepstad]

hear is another Article of this story

http://kaaltv.com/article/stories/S1617 ... ?cat=10151

[NanSiren]

Looks like Freeborn County also had problems.

http://kaaltv.com/article/stories/S1618 ... ?cat=10226

[Ryan45]

Winona county also sounded it sirens, sounded like they all when off. Although there is 1 2001 in Winona with a broken rotor. I did email EOC about it. I was watching KTTC and it seemed like Randy was pissed the sirens were going off. Couldn't understand that.

[Thunderboltlover]

Looks like Freeborn County also had problems.

http://kaaltv.com/article/stories/S1618 ... ?cat=10226

That's why municipalities should have at least 2-3 ways to activate the sirens besides just the county activation.

[anepstad]

Olmsted County Has the Digital System installed

[CJ]

Although there is 1 2001 in Winona with a broken rotor.

Somehow I seriously doubt it has a broken rotor. Rotator maybe?

[Jim_Ferer]

Software glitches are a poor excuse. All this software should be written in Ada* and run on Linux for reliability. Ada has countless advantages for control systems.
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*If you write software for the Department of Defense, it needs to be written in Ada for reliability. Ada is billed as being for software that has to run. For example, the control software for all U.S. fighters is written in Ada. If you have a software crash there, the recovery is the big yellow handle between your feet.

[anepstad]

Here is another article about the siren and response to fix the problem with the sirens and now Olmsted county will be doing a 3 minutes test every Wednesday at 10:00 AM


http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager ... 2&a=459369