SAND SPRINGS, Okla. — Authorities in Green Country are looking at ways to better alert communities about natural disasters.
Sand Springs will soon debut 20 new emergency siren systems to blare in all directions for any emergency event, with funding from its 2022 city bond election.
City Manager mike carter doesn't want residents to think of the alarms as just tornado sirens.
"We said, 'Can we think about our sirens differently?' Instead of associating them with the event, instead of it being a tornado sound or a flood sound flood sound, we want to (point) people the action we want them to take," Carter said.
The sirens can blare alerts with specific tones for a tornado, flood, wildfire, or national emergency.
"We think this is going to be a great addition to our community," he said.
The sirens are also solar powered, which the city believes offers more reliability in worst case scenarios.
After a wildfire temporarily displaced hundreds in the Bartlesville area earlier this year, Washington County EMA Director Kary Cox said the county doesn't have the funding for such a project that Sand Springs does, but they do have alternatives.
"We literally had officers going door-to-door during evacuations," Cox said.
"One of the things we're looking at recently is a mass notification for text messaging systems that would allow us to send messages direct to that users, to their handheld device."
Carter meanwhile said he saw an opportunity for his city during the catastrophic Hawaii fires, and that the sirens will help for 25 years starting next week when the new alert system is activated.
"We all try to learn from that and we try to say, 'What can we do differently to protect our citizens better?' And so their tragedy hopefully will mean that we can do things better here in Oklahoma."
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