MOUNT GILEAD, Ohio (WCMH) - Mount Gilead, the county seat of Morrow County, is currently without a tornado siren.
Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Nelson maintains nine tornado sirens in the county, including two in Mount Gilead, but those two sirens haven't worked in years. According to Mayor Donna Carver, that hasn't been a problem for the community.
"We've had, maybe, a handful of people with some concerns about us not having the tornado sirens, and we're very sensitive to that, you know?” Carver said. “We all reside in the village as well. We're all concerned for our safety. It's just not financially feasible for the village. We had a siren company come in and do an analysis. They told us that the two sirens we had were not adequate to cover the entire village. We would need five. And we were looking at about a half million dollars in sirens. Our entire budget is $1.5 million. It's just not feasible.”
Still, Carver has fielded concerns for nighttime storms and overnight storms.
"Technically, sirens are only meant to alert you if you're outdoors,” she said. “They're not really meant for you to hear them indoors.”
Instead of a traditional tornado siren, the village and much of Morrow County rely on modern technology to get warnings out.
"We do have several ways for people to get alerts,” Carver said. “One is through the county, the Hyper Reach program, which will call a cell phone, a landline, it will send you a text message. It will email you. There's also the sheriff's app which will text you or call you. Recently, the village purchased NOAA weather radios for those people who don't have a cell phone or, maybe they can't hear a landline from where they are. They are free. The batteries are free. All they have to do is contact our fire department to set up an appointment to come pick it up.
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The two tornado sirens in Mount Gilead are located at the water tower off of Douglas Street and next to the courthouse in the village square off of High Street. Carver said those stopped working around six years ago when emergency alerts went digital, and the analog towers weren't operational anymore.
Are people in the village as safe now as they were when the sirens worked?
"I actually believe they're safer,” Carver said. “When we had a recent warning, the five members of my family, we all had our cell phones. They all went off at once. And we were very alerted to what was going on. I believe we're safer now."
Morrow County Emergency Management Director Michael Nelson has been on the job for a year. He's been pushing everyone in the county to sign up for Hyper Reach notifications from the county.
$250 million facility opens down the road from Intel in New Albany, creating 225 jobs"It will automatically notify anybody in the affected area, so, it actually uses a geo reference,” Nelson said. “So if you are actually in the warned area, you will get a notification on your phone or your landline or your email, or text. So, it does all of those. There's many ways, and people just need to be, need to use those different ways. The other one that we talk about is… weather radios -- having a NOAA weather radio in your house, and you'll get notified as a warning goes out.”
Nelson said there are over 5,000 people signed up for Hyper Reach in Morrow County, a thousand of those within the last year. He also reached out to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to get a bulk deal on weather radios for residents, free of charge.
"The village ended up buying some, radios, 100 at this point, to give out to citizens that really would like them," Nelson said.
He said there are accommodations for hearing-impaired residents as well.
"There's a pillow shaker that you can connect to it,” Nelson said. “There's a flashing light that you can do it. So, there's other ways that can get notified when those go off if they're needed to.”
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