MANSFIELD — Richland County commissioners on Tuesday unanimously agreed to spend $40,880 to repair and/or replace 29 tornado warning sirens.
Richland County Emergency Management Agency Director Rebecca Owens told commissioners there are 20 sirens in need of repair and nine non-working sirens.
The county EMA office is responsible for 43 of the 47 sirens around the county. Meanwhile, Shelby, Ontario and Bellville are responsible for those in their own communities.
Funds for the project will come from Richland County’s capital improvements fund.
Owens told commissioners it will take six to eight weeks to repair the sirens through a contract with VASU Communications of Mansfield.
Work would then begin to convert the siren system from UHF to digital through Multi-Agency Radio Communications (MARCS).
“In collaboration with the sheriff’s Department and Captain (Jim) Sweat’s guidance, we are seeking funding for the siren repairs in order to make the transition to the MARCS system,” Owens said in her presentation to the three-member Board of Commissioners.
“The MARCS system will make communications across jurisdictions easier with over 200 towers across the state.”
Owens said tornado warning sirens remain important, even as other warning systems, such as the county’s online alerts system, become more available and widely used.
“We do have areas where we have a lot of Amish (and Mennonite) population or underserved individuals that don’t have access to those type of things,” Owens aid.
“So we wanted make sure that we are including them in all of our discussions and making sure that we have sirens that work, particularly in the northern part of the county.”
She reminded residents that the tornado sirens are intended to alert people who are outside when they are activated.
“They have about a mile radius. But if you’re sitting in your home and you’re five miles from the siren, you’re not going to hear it. It’s intended to be heard when you’re out in the community.
“But I do think we need to make sure that we’ve got them. We’re seeing more and more larger events with greater (numbers) of people (outside).
“Inkcarceration is a prime example of that,” she said, pointing to the popular three-day summer music festival that attracts more than 25,000 people per day to the grounds of the former Ohio State Reformatory.
She also discussed the new YMCA of North Central Ohio Sports Complex being planned near I-71 and Ohio 97.
“So again, making sure that if we’re looking at expanding and really having more venues that attract large crowds, (we need to) have proper safety precautions in place for those type of areas,” Owens said.
Commissioner Tony Vero supported the repairs — and the plans for the digital upgrade.
“I’m not a tech person, but this seems to make all the sense in the world,” he said. “Number one, obviously, as things move to digital, this takes us away from VHF (and) moves us to digital.
“The other thing it does is it talks about efficiencies and emergency operations … you no longer have to ping the repeater,” he said.
Vero said Sweat told him the county 9-1-1 dispatch center, which activates the local sirens when the National Weather Service service issues tornado warnings, could directly community with the sirens with a MARCS system.
Prior to meeting with Owens, commissioners had a moment of silence on Tuesday to honor the memory of former Richland County Prosecutor Gary Bishop, who died on Monday after a battle with cancer.
Bishop, who retired from office April 13, was 63.
