North Franklin Township installs new siren system
Jon Andreassi/Observer-Reporter
The new sirens are affixed to utility poles that are nearly 50 feet tall.
Jon Andreassi/Observer-Reporter
A new siren is installed at North Franklin Township’s main fire station at Sylvan Drive.
Jon Andreassi/Observer-Reporter
The sirens will be set up to automatically go off for three to five minutes if there is a tornado warning in North Franklin Township.
With the installation of a new siren system, North Franklin Township officials hope to be prepared for the next severe weather event.
One of those sirens, purchased from Federal Signal, went up Thursday morning at North Franklin Fire Company’s main fire station at 565 Sylvan Drive. Sirens were also installed at the fire stations at 410 Cleveland Road and 20 Greenhill Drive.
Bob Sabot, chairman of the township board of supervisors, said there was interest among the supervisors in turning the fire department’s sirens back on after several years of disuse.
“The bottom line is, when they checked the equipment, the equipment was all old,” Sabot said. “So when you start looking at the wiring, you start looking at everything else. You say, ‘Well, you’re going to have to change the whole thing.'”
Sabot said the sirens will cost the township $50,000 to $60,000.
“You’re going to have a unique and updated system here in North Franklin, which will not only provide a siren in case of fires, but it will have a much different siren sound for emergency alerts, including tornado warnings,” Sabot said.
The sirens will automatically activate if the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning for the area. For example, the siren would have sounded last October, when a warning was issued and tornados hit Washington County.
On Wednesday evening, Washington County was under a “tornado watch,” not a warning. Sabot said that alert would not have activated the sirens.
According to Sabot, the township is working with Washington County 911 to determine protocols for when the siren should be manually activated.
If a tornado warning does trip the sirens, they will sound for approximately three to five minutes.
However, some nearby residents have concerns about the necessity of the system.
Joe Cohen said he and others in North Franklin are “perplexed” why the sirens are being brought back after being deactivated nearly a decade ago.
“Nobody is opposed to safety at night, especially if there is a tornado – anybody would want to be alerted to that,” Cohen said, adding that the concern is the sirens going off in the middle of night for calls that don’t present an immediate threat to residents.
“A lot of us work nights or get home at all hours. We’ve got kids and we don’t want them woken up at all hours.”
Cohen said there is also concern that the sirens will drive down property values.
“Somebody is going to look at that and say, ‘I don’t want to live next door to a siren that goes off multiple times a day,” Cohen said.
According to Sabot, the siren will sound only one minute for fires. He also said that the sirens, affixed to utility poles, are much higher off the ground than the previous ones.
“The other thing that the residents close by need to understand that they’re missing is the old system was 24 feet in the air. This is going to be double that. This is almost going to be 50 feet in the air. The main sound is going to go up and over them,” Sabot said.
“People are going to have concerns, and I understand change is always hard,” he added. “You do what you think is best for the residents.”