Tornado sirens will blare across Indiana today in the annual Severe Weather Preparedness Week test.
Sirens will sound shortly after 10:15a and again around 7:35 pm in an effort to catch people both at work and at home.
According to Salem Police Department Major Detective Scott Ratts, sirens will be toned in Salem. “If you hear the sirens going off in the city (Thursday) at these times, don’t be alarmed as it is just a drill. This is to verify the sirens do work and are ready for any severe weather we may have this spring/summer.”
The state-wide alert is a chance to remind yourself of your emergency plan, so you don‘t lose precious seconds in case of a real storm trying to figure out which room is the safest to retreat to.
WSLM will be participating in this statewide drill and station owner Becky White recommends having an emergency kit prepared with three days‘ worth of food and water, and perhaps other essentials such as a change of clothes or important documents. She says the drill is a good time to double-check that kit.
Indiana University is on spring break, but will conduct its own test alongside the sirens, sending texts, emails and social-media messages to students and staff at all eight I-U campuses.
Ratts noted during the test times, you will also hear your weather radio alerting as National Weather Service will issue the alert to the radios. “If you don’t have a weather radio, it would be a great time to get one in the event that your power is out during a severe weather incident,” said Ratts.
White said both WSLM 97.9 FM and WSLM 1220 AM will air the Emergency Alert System tones and provides EAS test alerts each month and week. “New EAS rules affect all Indiana broadcasters. WSLM is 100 percent compliant with the new FCC rules in according with emergency alerts. In 2012, all radio stations had a deadline to install new digital EAS systems that receive tones not only through a digital transmission but also as a tone from other stations in the area who are “chained” together. When a tone is provided in an area, several stations are linked together and pass on the signal to each other.”
