For those of us who live in tornado country there’s, one sound that we really don’t want to hear… the long continuous blast of a tornado siren.
Everybody who lives in tornado country knows the sound I’m talking about.
Tornado as seen from Salty’s car window
Pretty much every community across the United States has a siren warning system. Depending upon where you live, that system it may be used for various things. For example, here in the Midwest, be tornado siren / fire siren combination is what we hear.
The tornado siren
The tornado siren consists of one long continuous blast that lasts the entire duration of the emergency. Unlike in some places, there is no all clear signal with our tornado signal. One long blast seek shelter when you hear.
We also live in the land of the volunteer fire department. Unlike many of you folks who live in the city who have full-time professional fire departments, we depend entirely on volunteers for our fire protection.
Our fire protection comes from a firehouse that sits empty except during training nights and weekends. When a fire is reported, say for example somebody calls 911, a call goes out over the fire department radio network to all of the volunteer firemen. Additionally they blow the “fire siren”.
The fire warning consists of a series of multiple blasts on the siren in groups usually of either five or seven activations each activation lasting about five seconds at the height of the blast.
The Noon Whistle
The city where I live (if you can call a place of 1200 people a city) sounds the warning siren once a day every day at noon. In fact, the office where I work sits right underneath one of the towns sirens, so if I’m deeply engrossed in my work I sometimes get quite startled when the thing goes off.
People need to take warnings seriously
While this is all well and good, these warnings are ignored far too often. As a society, many people do not take tornado warning sirens seriously.
Several times I’ve heard the tornado siren sound and headed for cover. Later, when I checked on our security video to see had been going on outside during the alert, I noticed all of the people driving around town while the siren was still sounding.
It’s crazy. If a tornado siren is sounding, the smart and prudent thing to do is to find shelter.
How in the world is this a difficult concept to understand?
Normalcy Bias
It’s our old friend normalcy bias paying us a visit. Normalcy bias is a very common and very dangerous belief that many people hold when they are involved or facing a disaster situation or a survival situation.
Basically, it makes people underestimate the risks and the likelihood of bad things happening to them in a disaster. this belief that they are safe (when in fact they are obviously facing danger) may keep people from either preparing for the disaster in the first place, or reacting quickly when disaster is upon them.
A perfect example of this, frankly, is people a ignoring a tornado siren during a thunderstorm.
The bigger picture
Of course, it’s not just the people who as individuals suffer from normalcy bias, it’s also collectively “we the people”. .
Our government also ignores preparedness even though the risks of certain disasters are well known, and the likelihood that they will occur over a long period of time are very high.
A perfect example of this is: Many school districts in twister alley built schools without an adequate storm shelter. This lead to a lot of tragedies over the years. In fact, not only were there no storm shelters, but entire walls of the schools were made almost entirely out of glass. This is a very bad idea.
Fortunately, after enough schools were hit by tornadoes, most school districts have realized that this is something they must get fixed.
In our area alone to school districts have either just built or are in the process of building massive storm shelters for their students to use in the case of severe weather.
Examine, understand, plan, take actions
As preppers we need to look beyond what others are doing and consider what we personally need to get done to be prepared for when disaster strikes.
For example, we need to know what the most likely dangers are for our community. This shouldn’t be too hard to figure out, based on the disasters that have occurred in our locations in the past: tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunami, hurricanes, etc.
We need to have plans and preparations to protect ourselves and our families from those dangers. We need to make smart choices about where we live to reduce the risk of those dangers.
If an area is prone to brushfires that tend to wipe out every house and ranch, then as a prepper you have a couple of choices.
First , you need to question the wisdom of living in a place where you are very likely to lose your home at some point in the next 25 years…
Or
Second, you have to go out when it’s not fire’s season and cut fire breaks to protect your property, install sprinkler systems to protect your structures, and things like that.
If you live in twister alley, you need a good tornado shelter.
Period.
Your children need to be going to schools that are fitted out with effective tornado shelters.
The Bug-In Kit
You should have your “bug in” kit all ready to go in your house.
What’s a bug in kit you ask? It’s what you grab to take to the basement when the tornado siren blows, or during hurricane time…
At a minimum, your bug in kit should include copies of all your important papers, your list of phone and numbers of people to contact including your insurance agents and your insurance company phone numbers. It should include a spare set of titles for your vehicles and a spare set of eyeglasses for each person who wears them.
Your bug in kit should include your entire 72 hour kit, spare clothing, cash, credit or debit card and at least 72 hours worth of your medicine. It should also include any small and portable items that you simply do not want to live without like, for example, your family pictures. These items should be placed in a durable waterproof bag.
We keep all of the supplies that we would need in our basement, which is our tornado shelter.
We keep all of our bug in items that we need on a regular basis in two spots right next to the basement door so that we can grab them on the way downstairs.
These spots are where is we store our wallets, our car keys and the fireproof box where we keep our birth certificates passports and other important documents.
If it’s storming, and if we hear the long blast, we quickly slipped into our “quick dress clothing” if we were in bed,
If we are up then we just head downstairs grabbing the bug in kit stuff along the way.
PRO TIP: Very important, when you head to the shelter make sure you are wearing shoes.
It can happen here
There are many towns across America that had been destroyed by tornadoes, by earthquakes, by hurricanes, by tsunami, by wildfires, by landslides, by sheer straight-line wind blasts, my avalanche, by volcano.
Pretty much you name it, then that disaster has happened.
Seventy percent of the people who lived in those communities that come under a disaster threat either ignore it or try to wish it away.
This 70% includes the people in government as well. History is rife with governmental electees and employees who believed that “it couldn’t happen here”.
What we need to do is make sure that we are always in the 30% that realizes the disasters can and will happen right here where we are, and to be ready for it.
We need to have battery powered weather radios.
We need to listen to your weather radios.
When the tornado siren blows, we need to take shelter.