WASHINGTON COURT HOUSE, Ohio — The Washington Court House Fire Department said Tuesday that the city’s outdoor warning sirens performed exactly as designed when they stayed silent during a tornado warning, after residents questioned why no alert sounded in the city.
The fire department said in a Facebook post that the city’s sirens are automated and activate only when a National Weather Service tornado warning polygon actually reaches Washington Court House. Tuesday’s warning stayed south of the city, so the sirens correctly did not sound there, the department said. The village of Good Hope, which shares the same siren system, did activate because the warning reached that area, according to the post.
Other villages and townships in Fayette County sound their sirens through a separate system operated by the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, the fire department said. That countywide system activates every siren in the county any time a warning is issued anywhere within its borders, regardless of whether the threat is actually nearby, according to the post.
The department said its system is built differently on purpose, so that a siren sounding in Washington Court House means the threat is genuinely close by rather than simply somewhere in the county. Officials said the goal is to keep the sirens meaningful rather than have residents tune them out as routine background noise.
The fire department thanked residents for asking questions about the discrepancy rather than assuming the system had malfunctioned.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the Washington Court House Fire Department.
