Smithville’s two newest tornado sirens passed Wednesday’s testing.
EMA Director Charlie Parker said the city ran the sirens in recognition of Tennessee’s Severe Weather Awareness Week.
“The new sirens are an automatic siren tat will go off when the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning for the Smithville area,” Parker said. “We do want to check that monthly just to make sure the communication is good.”
Parker said the third existing siren is currently out of commission and waiting for new equipment to be installed. Testings will continue monthly every first Wednesday at noon.
“We installed two new sirens, and we did them on Smithville city owned property,” Parker said. “One of them is on Miller Road where the city water tank sits now. The second one is one West Broad Street or Highway 70 by the other water tank on the west end of town.”
The existing siren is located on the top of city hall. Parker said that one should be repaired in the coming weeks, but some upgrades have already taken place.
“It was an old manual one,” Parker said. “You just had to push a button to set it off, so we actually converted that and added the radio controller to it to where it will be able to go off automatically.”
Parker said he wants to remind residents to stay weather aware and have a storm preparedness plan ready.
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