Story Published:
Sep 25, 2007 at 7:52 PM CDT
Story Updated:
Sep 26, 2007 at 12:11 AM CDT
SPRINGFIELD -- Storms sirens blare warnings that severe weather is headed your direction, announcing that you should take cover. But, can you really count on them? Eighty sirens protect 150,000 people in Springfield. We wanted to know how well they work.
Greene County Emergency Management and Springfield Public Works set off the sirens once a month but actually test them much more. In fact, they test the 80 computerized sirens twice a day, every day of the year. That's thousands of tests, and we got all the results.
You might expect dozens, if not hundreds of failures, but we found just 14. That's just more than a dozen times these sirens have malfunctioned.
The problems range from minor battery charger replacements to a circuit board reset. In almost every case, problems are fixed within hours, even in the middle of the night.
