Siren Testing April 20 for Severe Weather Awareness Week
Severe Weather Awareness Week: April 17-21
Severe weather equipment needs to be tested and Severe Weather Awareness week is the best time for the testing. Washington County has 3 siren zones - an ALL zone, a NORTH zone, and a SOUTH zone. To confirm all three zone activations are working properly, the county will leverage the two testing times on Thursday.
1:45 PM
- North Zone (north of I94): sound NORTH zone siren code + set off the pager group for fire departments in north zone. North sirens will sound for 1 minutes, then a CANCEL tone will be sent for testing and to ensure all sirens stopped before the next test.
- SOUTH Zone (south of Hwy 96): sound SOUTH zone siren code + set off pager group for fire departments in south zone. South sirens will sound for 1 minutes, then a CANCEL tone will be sent for testing and to ensure all sirens stopped before the next test.
- ALL Zone: sound the ALL zone siren code + set off the pager group for all the fire departments. Sirens will sound for 3 minutes and be allowed to shut off on their own, thus testing the auto-shut off function.
6:45 PM
- Sound the ALL zone siren code + set off the pager group for all the fire departments. Sirens will sound for 3 minutes and be allowed to shut off on their own.
Siren Monitoring
Cities conducting live monitoring of their jurisdictional sirens should coordinate personnel near siren locations for the 1:45 pm test. This will ensure all siren codes and siren functions are monitored. Cities with siren monitoring software should be able to run an audit report for all their sirens on all siren codes after the 1:45 pm testing.
Fire Department All Call or Station Tones
A few fire departments have added their ALL CALL or a fire station tone to the siren zone pages. This ensures their entire department are alerted and ready when either a tornado warning is issued or sustained winds over 70 mph (possibly changing to 80 mph) are confirmed in their coverage area. Fire departments may test the programming during this time.