Weather siren project will alert Dougherty County residents of extreme events

ALBANY — Residents of unincorporated Dougherty County will be able to get the same loud wailing alerts of approaching severe weather with the purchase of 20 of the devices to serve areas outside Albany.

“This will extend into the county,” Albany Fire Department Chief Cedric Scott told the Dougherty County Commission during a Monday work session. “We are very excited about this opportunity to have been awarded $750,000.”

The county portion of the project will total $519,892, with the county’s match set at $3,000 for the grant.

Commissioners will vote on the proposal from Sirens For Cities Inc. for 20 alert sirens later this month.

The warning sirens are part of work being performed as the community has been designated as weather-ready.

One of the objectives of that program is to provide multiple forms of communicating the approach of deadly weather events, which the sirens will provide.

“It is distributed throughout the county to provide the extra (alert), the opportunity to have the sirens in the event they need arises,” Scott, who also serves as the county’s emergency management director, said during an interview following the meeting.

Previously weather alert sirens also included instructions. However, under a new format the sirens only emit their piercing wail, which is the alert to seek safe shelter immediately as severe weather is imminent in the area.

They are activated when the National Weather Service issues or reissues a tornado warning or during a severe thunderstorm only if winds of 80 miles per hour or greater are observed by a trained spotter or predicted by the NWS. They also are activated without a warning when a trained weather spotter observes a tornado or extreme winds.

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