Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Thursday, May 08, 2008
Officials: Tornado sirens didn’t go off
The National Weather Service had just issued a tornado warning for Winona County on Tuesday evening when Eric Lindquist listened for sirens near his Stockton home.
But like most others in Stockton, Lindquist never heard a thing.
Mechanical and communication problems kept thousands from hearing tornado warning sirens that were supposed to be activated during a severe storm that swept through southern Minnesota on Tuesday night.
Stockton’s main emergency siren didn’t sound when activated by county dispatchers, emergency officials said Wednesday. A communications lapse between dispatchers also left Winona residents without official warning, though television and radio reported a tornado southeast of St. Charles at 5:30 p.m.
The National Weather Service issued the warning at 5:33 p.m. based on citizen sightings along Interstate 90, said National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Shea. The sightings were never confirmed by government officials.
Winona County emergency management director Bob Bilder said he responded to the tornado warning by ordering dispatchers to activate sirens countywide. The order is county protocol whenever the weather service issues tornado or severe-storm warnings, Bilder said.
But the response was plagued by malfunctioning equipment and “miscommunication,” Bilder acknowledged.
“That’s what we’ve been working out today — how we can make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Bilder said.
Sirens were activated countywide and sounded everywhere except for Stockton, Bilder said. City of Winona sirens are operated by a different system and weren’t activated because of “human error,” he said.
The Stockton siren malfunctioned for at least the second time since August 2007, when it also failed to sound, said City Clerk Beth Winchester.
The Stockton City Council voted to pay for a $23,000 replacement that was scheduled to arrive last month, Winchester said. The new siren now is slated to be installed Friday.
Another siren near the city’s trailer court always has functioned properly, Winchester said.
When officials in Stockton realized the siren wasn’t working, Cheryl Beeman, a Stockton City Council member, drove door-to-door notifying elderly residents of the tornado warning.
“I was so upset” the sirens didn’t sound, Beeman said. “After a natural disaster of a flood, … it should have been a big priority.”
Beeman said she may organize an ad-hoc community group to notify other residents of possible natural disasters.
After the events of last August, Winchester acknowledged that Stockton residents have a reason to be on edge.
“When it rains,” she said, “everybody’s jumpy.”
Contact Mark Sommerhauser at (507) 453-3514 or msommerhauser@winonadailynews.com.
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