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shucks
2145 Posts
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 Posted - 04/28/2011 : 10:50:46 AM
Just asking, hope the commissioner monitors this post.Are there any tornado sirens in Union County? If not, what is one good, sound ,logical reason as to why. I thought there was one at the fire station on Pat Colwell. 2 years ago they were testing a siren there but I have never heard it since. As an afterthought does anyone know the commissioners office email address? Shucks |
Bob_Hill
USA
67 Posts
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Posted - 04/28/2011 : 12:17:43 PM
From the Union County Website:E-mail ~ unioncounty@uniongov.com Almost there... |
Mr Bill
USA
1390 Posts
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Posted - 04/28/2011 : 1:04:15 PM
I have not ever heard of any tornado sirens in the area and didn't even know they had such things until I spend a summer in Illinois as a teen.One reason perhaps we do not is that we don't seem to have tornadoes here. I remember one year we had a bad storm and a number of trees snapped off midway down or at the base that most assumed was from a tornado and it was later attributed to a macroburst rather than a tornado. The other side of the mountain (White County) tends to get worse weather I think, including the tornadoes. Any way, that my take on things.
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meg
United States
969 Posts
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Posted - 04/28/2011 : 7:57:48 PM
Shucks, you might want to check this out:(From http://unioncountyga.gov/e-911dispatchcenter.htm ) What is Union Alert? Union Alert is designed to instantly reach cell phones, landline numbers, email addresses, pagers and desktop Alert when an urgent county alert needs to be communicated. In the event of an emergency, a text message, voice call or email will be sent to the contact information you registered with the system. How do I sign up for Union Alert? Citizens of Union County can register by mailing your phone number, pager number, and/or email address, name and address to 76 Hunt Martin Street, Suite D, Blairsville, Ga 30512 or call 706-439-6056. Can I register for Union Alert via text? Yes. You can register from your cell phone by texting UCALERT to 69310. You must remove all signatures and other texts in the body of your message. You will receive a confirmation text message letting you know you have been signed up to receive Union Alert. Does Union Alert cost anything to use? No. There is no cost for an individual who has registered for the Alert; however, your cell phone carrier may charge you to receive text messages, so please check your plan. |
shucks
2145 Posts
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Posted - 04/29/2011 : 12:46:28 PM
Meg, it my humble opinion the Union Alert system is worthless. What happens in a powere outage, what about people who do not have cell phones,land lines or computors. When the power is out none of that works. Why is it that most counties have a siren network, but not Union. Could it be that sirens are the best warning system? Hearing a siren is much more recognizable than a message. No power, no message. Sirens can be operated via generator. I guess you have to balance peoples lives against what is percieved to be a "good" warning system. Shucks
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Mr Bill
USA
1390 Posts
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Posted - 04/29/2011 : 2:17:11 PM
quote:
What happens in a power outage, what about people who do not have cell phones,land lines or computers. When the power is out none of that works.
Cell phones still work when the power is out.
Land lines have a separate 24v power supplied via the phone line that can still work when regular power lines are down. The newer powered phones won't work, but phones are still available that work without an external power supply. I keep one in a box for just that kind of an occasion.I will agree that computers are pretty worthless when the power goes out though. While thinking about this topic I realized that I don't have a WeatherAlert radio that sounds an alarm when NOAA issues a severe weather warning. That's an easy fix that I'm working on now. It's silly that we have to buy another piece of electronics for that. Why can't our cell phones provide that functionality? Come on cell phone manufacturers - get with the program!
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GrayEagle
USA
9966 Posts
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Posted - 04/29/2011 : 2:23:17 PM
I don't have much faith in the UCAlert system. Absolutely no alerts during this last storm or even one or two before. Don't know why.GrayEagle
<:))))<><
"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." Dietrich Bonhoeffer |
BlueRose
417 Posts
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Posted - 04/29/2011 : 4:57:14 PM
quote:
While thinking about this topic I realized that I don't have a WeatherAlert radio that sounds an alarm when NOAA issues a severe weather warning. That's an easy fix that I'm working on now. It's silly that we have to buy another piece of electronics for that. Why can't our cell phones provide that functionality? Come on cell phone manufacturers - get with the program!
Hubby set up his Droid to go off. Go to the Weather Channel. He disabled it I believe cause it kept going off. We had a WeatherAlert radio too but every time it rained we kept getting flood alerts.
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meg
United States
969 Posts
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Posted - 04/29/2011 : 6:23:42 PM
I haven't signed up for Union Alerts so I don't know anything about it except what I've read.Just out of curiosity, I wonder how many times there's actually been a tornado in Union County. Anybody know where to find that information? |
Mr Bill
USA
1390 Posts
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Posted - 04/29/2011 : 9:05:23 PM
quote:
Just out of curiosity, I wonder how many times there's actually been a tornado in Union County. Anybody know where to find that information?
Only two tornadoes (both occurring on the same day) have been recorded in Union County, according to a website that tracks that data using NOAA weather/storm information dating from the early 1950. The data they provided is:
Union County Tornadoes
date, event #, time, dead, inj, F Scale, County number
JUN 28 1994, 043, 1630, 0, 0, F1, 291
JUN 28 1994, 045, 1710, 0, 0, F1, 291 Two tornadoes on one day, with no deaths or injuries, in fifty-one years. How much money is worth spending on sirens with that low kind of risk? In that same time span, White County showed three, two of them on the same day as Union County's. Towns County does not show up on the list. Fannin County showed 4, with 2 injuries. Lumpkin County shows 6, with as many deaths and more than 50 injuries. They're on that other side of the mountain though where weather seems to intensify before crossing over to our side. Source: http://www.tornadoproject.com/alltorns/gatorn.htm
(and they're using data from http://www4.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-win/wwcgi.dll?wwEvent~Storms )
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Mr Bill
USA
1390 Posts
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Posted - 04/29/2011 : 9:09:21 PM
quote:
We had a WeatherAlert radio too but every time it rained we kept getting flood alerts.
Look for Weather Alert radios with S.A.M.E. The one that I got allows programming the SAME codes to only get the alerts you want and to squelch or disable the ones that you don't want to get (there are some codes you can't disable though).More info about SAME codes: http://www.weather.gov/nwr/nwrsame.htm
Edit: This is what I found, Blue, up on Weather Channel. It looks like you can set even your simpler cell phones to get weather alerts. SmartPhones running O/Ses like Droid have even more options available. http://www.weather.com/mobile/textmessaging.html and https://registration.weather.com/ursa/alerts/step1
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shucks
2145 Posts
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Posted - 04/30/2011 : 2:24:04 PM
Thanks for everyone's input. I was surprised by a news channel stating that 45%of the people in the US do not have a cell phone.Nest, I just heard on the news that the GA. Emergency Management and FEMA serverely critcized(sic) Spaulding County for not having a tornado siren network. GEMA went so far as to say that lives were lost and scores injured because of no siren warning system. I think it takes an amalgum of things for the best protection. Weather radios, warning sirens, education on severe weather problems, better building codes and weather education. I just think that the so called "alerts" are a totally failure in the overall picture. With weather patterns changing, it is not out of the question that Union will have a severe tornado in the not to distant future. We cannot continue to have near misses. Shucks
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meg
United States
969 Posts
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Posted - 04/30/2011 : 3:34:43 PM
quote:
With weather patterns changing, it is not out of the question that Union will have a severe tornado in the not to distant future. We cannot continue to have near misses.Shucks
I don't see why not. Why would we all of a sudden start to have tornadoes here when they have been VERY rare occurrences for as long as anybody can remember. And tornadoes don't just pop up out of the blue. The conditions have to be right and most people with any common sense can tell when the weather is getting bad and there might be some severe storms. |
shucks
2145 Posts
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Posted - 04/30/2011 : 6:57:02 PM
Meg, the reason we have a much better chance of a tornado is the changing of the weather systems. The disturbances out of the Gulf and the cold fronts are forming differently now, thereby drastically increasing the chances for a local tornado.I am no expert,so I do not know why this is happening. Shucks |
Wildflower
USA
4528 Posts
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Posted - 05/09/2011 : 9:59:55 PM
Rabun County, just to the east of Towns County got hit.Two people died. One was a former senator. Others were injured. The tornado hit Lake Burton where it did tremendous damage. It also hit Mountain City. The night of the storm, I thought they reported that Suches in Union County had been hit also. Way back in the spring of 1992, I went to Atlanta with a friend. We drove north to Helen and went through an area in the mountains where a tornado had touched down in a small area. At first I thought a lumber company had been through because of all the trees down. Then we saw a few houses that had the stuffing knocked out of them. After we got back to Atlanta, the news said there had been a tornado. I was surprised to see a tornado in the mountains, but it does happen. Rabun County Damage: http://www.theclaytontribune.com/articles/2011/04/28/news/news01.txt http://www.theclaytontribune.com/articles/2011/04/28/news/news02.txt http://www.theclaytontribune.com/articles/2011/05/03/news/news01.txt http://www.theclaytontribune.com/articles/2011/05/05/news/news01.txt http://www.ajc.com/news/lake-burton-community-picks-930612.html http://www2.wspa.com/news/2011/apr/28/64/roads-remain-closed-in-rabun-county-ga-access-only-ar-1764938/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W5MSxV1pAY&feature=fvst
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSekqFn__Gs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-6cMJoiZq8
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Wildflower
USA
4528 Posts
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Posted - 05/15/2011 : 02:52:47 AM
Best video footage yet from a helicopter.http://www.wyff4.com/video/27702207/detail.html It's raw footage. Screen goes black a few times and it seems to repeat at one point, but the last quarter of the tape covers new ground. Really unbelievable destruction. Some houses were cut in half.
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Tornado sirens
