All Northsiders have been subject to the inclement and erratic weather felt across the country these past few months.
Just a few weekends ago, tornado sirens could be heard across Jackson, Madison and Ridgeland as dark clouds let down torrential rain.
Luckily, the tornado sirens alerted residents throughout the Northside just how bad the weather was, and no one suffered major damage.
Madison County alone has 25 tornado sirens, which are tested on the first Monday of every month.
“The county does it on the first Monday of every month, but most people do it on the first calendar day,” former county emergency management director Tom Lariviere said.
Lariviere recently retired but still works part-time in the emergency management department.
One siren is located in the most recent annexed area of Ridgeland, bumping the number of the city’s sirens from seven to eight.
“Ours uses a different technology to activate, because it’s a different brand of siren. The city (will) have to convert it to their system.”
Lariviere said the county is in the process of transferring the siren to the city for fair market value, a third of what the siren cost approximately five years ago.
The city approved the purchase of the siren just two weeks ago during a board of aldermen meeting.
The county is also looking to implement a new siren near Velma Jackson.
“We try to have one on every school property,” Lariviere said. “It’s in, but it’s not installed. It’s going to go by Velma Jackson High School.”
Lariviere said sirens throughout the county can be activated indiscriminately or selectively.
“If we see weather going on in the north end, we won’t activate the south end… But historically, we activate all of them when there’s a tornado warning.”
The city of Madison has 13 tornado sirens, and the city of Canton, three.
“Ours are activated through a computer,” Lariviere said. “You can go click on what you want to do or not do.”
To test the signals, the computer sends out a radio signal to every siren, which sends back a “handshake signal.”
“So, it says we got it back,” Lariviere said. “We also do a silent test to see if it’ll rotate. If it rotates, it sounded, too. It’s integrated technology. Or we can sound it again.”
Lariviere said throughout the course of the year, the county tries to put eyes on every signal for at least one monthly test.
“That’s the minimal go. Often, we do better than that. We’ve also got some civilians that live out there, so we’ll call them and ask them to tell us. We’ll also ask the schools and fire stations to call us.”
For more rural signals, Lariviere said if there’s at least one home nearby, that resident will be asked to listen for the siren. Otherwise, county firemen can be stationed at the signals to ensure they’re sounding off correctly.
“We have enough firemen on duty to scatter them, do the test and have them look at them, as well as the computer confirming that they work.”
With citizens, firemen and the standard computer system, Lariviere said it’s a much more reliable way of ensuring each signal is working properly in case of a weather emergency.
Lariviere formerly worked for the city of Madison, where he said sirens are primarily placed at outdoor venues.
“We try to pick those places where there’re a lot of people that won’t be from Madison — Home Depot, Madison Central, every golf course. There are people coming from other places who aren’t weather conscious, so we want to make sure we have all the outdoor areas covered,” he said.
