COVINGTON, Ga. — Warning sirens apparently were operating properly in three locations in west Newton when a tornado hit the area on New Year’s Eve, a county official said.
Emergency Management Agency director Jody Nolan said his department tested the three sirens in the area of the tornado’s path recently and determined all were operating as they should when a tornado warning was sent out New Year’s Eve.
“We know the signal was sent out to activate them,” Nolan said.
The sirens are at Newton County Fire Service Station 7 at 11662 Brown Bridge Road and Station 14 at 6169 Hwy. 212; and on top of a water tower at the intersection of Salem and Kirkland roads, he said.
Area residents complained on social media they did not hear the sirens go off before an EF-1 tornado ran through west Newton County between 5:39 and 5:46 p.m., a National Weather Service preliminary report stated.
The twister moved on a 2.5-mile path roughly along Brown Bridge Road. It downed trees and damaged two vehicles, a middle school and some houses but did not cause any serious injuries.
Nolan said the National Weather Service (NWS) had issued a tornado watch for the area about 12 minutes before the tornado hit.
He said local emergency operators are trained to activate sirens after the National Weather Service tells them a tornado warning has been issued for a specific area. However, there is a two- to three-minute lag time between when the signal is given and the siren operating, he said.
“Once the warning was issued, the tornado had already formulated,” Nolan said. “Five minutes can make all the difference in the world in the event of a tornado.”
Newton County operates 23 weather sirens which are tested weekly on Wednesdays at noon. They are located in each of the cities in Newton County as well as throughout the county’s unincorporated areas, he said.
Each siren costs $15,000 to $18,000 for the device and its maintenance, Nolan said.
The sirens “primarily are placed where they could provide warning” to people outdoors in the nearby area, Nolan said.
About 1,100 — one every 1/4-square-mile — would be needed to properly notify residents because of the way modern homes are insulated against outside sounds and how densely populated the area is, Nolan said.
NWS sees about 90% of tornadoes form by using Doppler radar, he said. Trained weather spotters or first-responders see only about 10% of tornadoes from the ground, Nolan said.
Nolan said he continues to recommend county residents register cell phones and landlines with the CodeRed service for emergency alert notifications at https://public.coderedweb.com/CNE/en-US/BFB7CC4C6C0A?isMobile=true.
Nolan said residents can select to receive text warnings to be sent via email or text messages to their phone.
“You get immediate notifications and you don’t have that delay,” Nolan said
District 3 Commissioner Alana Sanders said during a Jan. 4 Board of Commissioners meeting that residents said they did not hear warning sirens before the tornado struck.
Sanders asked County Attorney Patrick Jaugstetter about her concerns because of Jaugstetter’s experience in what other area counties had done to prepare for severe weather.
She said customers in the parking lot at Walmart at Salem and Brown Bridge roads were not warned because no sirens were nearby.
“What can we do as a commission to make sure that we are warning citizens or getting those sirens up in the high-density (areas) which are District 3 and District 2,” Sanders asked.
“Those citizens had no idea that tornado was even hovering over them.”
Jaugstetter echoed Nolan in saying that “as a general rule” sirens are used to warn anyone outside at the time of the emergency.
“As a general rule, you place your sirens where people are going to be outside,” Jaugstetter said. “I’m not sure sirens are the solution.”
Commissioner J.C. Henderson said he believed some COVID relief money should be directed toward purchase of more sirens.
“I don’t care if they didn’t hear it,” he said. “Just to have them in the community is a certain amount of protection.”
