Jackson County EMA has been awarded an estimated $5,000 grant from Twin Lakes to purchase and distribute free weather radios to the public.
Jackson County EMA Public Information Officer Derek Woolbright said the grant will allow the department to purchase around 100 weather radios. Woolbright said EMA hopes the weather radios will make people more weather aware.
“Weather radios are one of the most effective ways for people being able to garner weather information, watches, and warnings, and those types of things,” Woolbright said. “One of the most effective ways because you are not relying on cellular data or electricity.”
Woolbright said storms become so much more dangerous, especially in nighttime hours. Woolbright said most people are put in a bad spot during severe weather due to not being notified.
“That very frequently is the biggest issue in people being injured or killed in severe weather, is just that they simply were not aware of an impending storm or were not aware of an impending storm or were not aware of the severity of that impending storm. And so they don’t know, especially in those nighttime hours when people are sleeping, they most commonly don’t know to get to their safe place in their residence.”
Woolbright said weather radios work similarly to a pager-type warning system.
“When a warning is issued for your area, or some type of severe weather alert is issued for your area, they alert you audibly, and it is a significant audible noise that it makes in your residence that tells you what that watch or warning is in your area,” Woolbright said.
Woolbright said the goal is to have the radios ready in January. Woolbright said EMA is planning to host a weather education event to distribute the weather radios, but also have meteorologists come and educate the public on weather and recruit more weather spotters in the county.