Recently tornadoes barreled through the Midwest, Michigan and our border state Ohio. That made this meeting in Springfield on potentially re-installing an emergency siren all the more timely. 

"The community was overall supportive of us relocating the siren. We’re going to move forward with a plan to get it put back up in that west part of the community, so they're protected during a storm,” Chief of Springfield Fire Department Luke Weldon said. 

Even with newer technology, Shawn Wroblewski with West County Emergency Management said sirens are a good idea to have. 

“I mean we’ve had cell phone failures recently with Virzion, AT&T, and all the other carriers. If you’re relying on those to give you the warnings when tornadoes and storms come about, it just might not come around,” Wroblewski said.

The old siren was decommissioned after the Springfield Fire Department received a letter from a property owner of the land the siren was on. They also received a petition signed by residents. There were complaints of frequent loud noise that residents claim could harm their hearing.  

Wroblewski said the reason the sirens are so loud is to make sure that everyone is alerted in time.

"It has to alert you in the middle of the night. You only have a matter of moments, seconds really, to get into a position where you can try and survive a tornado or severe weather event," Wroblewski said. 

Chief Luke Weldon said the next step will be finding the money to re-install a siren in a new location.

 “We’re going to move forward with trying to secure some grant funding to pay for a majority of the project to get it put back up. There will probably be more meetings to come to determine exactly where it’s going to be and how we’re going to put it up there,” Weldon said.