With No Warning

Spring is finally here, bringing warmer temperatures, budding flowers, and Mother Nature’s fury. Around here, spring is not just about beauty, it can also be about disaster.

Spring doesn’t always come gently to Arkansas, and we have to be ready to take shelter from the storms. That means having a safe place, keeping an eye on the weather, staying informed, and when the severe weather sirens sound, being ready to take cover.

We seem to be having a problem in Blytheville with one of those things, though. Our weather sirens are not functioning the way they should be, and it is putting our citizens at risk.

I understand the problems. The sirens are old. The city is trying, most likely doing the best they can. The sirens are constantly being worked on by Public Works. It’s hard to get parts for the sirens because of their age. I get it. And, I don’t get it.

If this is the system we have chosen to use, it has to work. If it is beyond working, we must get a new system. During the last two severe weather events, the tornado sirens failed to work properly. An earlier power outage caused the latest failure. I don't know what caused the other one. The back up plan was for our law enforcement officers to go slowly down the streets of our city, warning our citizens of the severe weather.

While any plan is better than no plan at all, this just isn’t going to work as a routine measure. It is inherently dangerous. We’ve been lucky the last few times we have had severe weather. Mother Nature is not always in such a good mood.

In a true severe weather emergency, our officers would literally be putting their own lives on the line by going out trying to warn our citizens. In order for the warnings to be effective, they must move up and down the streets slowly. Storms move quickly.

There is absolutely no way the officers could warn every citizen of our community before the storm hit. In addition, people leave their safe spots to come to a window or door to see what the commotion with the lights and sirens are about. They should stay in their safe spot, not come out of them.

A tornado can pick up those police vehicles and toss them around like toys. Do we really want to risk our officer’s lives like that? I personally don’t. I have friends that work for the Blytheville Police Department and the Mississippi County Sheriff’s Office. Some of those friends are like family to me. I don’t want to lose them because they were being used in place of outdated equipment.

We must address this issue, and do whatever it takes to get a warning system that works each and every time. If the sirens are beyond repair, we need a new system. I don’t know what the answer is, I just know we need one.

It’s spring in Arkansas. That means beauty will come to our state. It also means more storms are coming. We must do something, now, before we risk losing the most valuable thing we have as a community: the people that live here.