After months of problems with many of Franklin County's 32 emergency alert sirens, Emergency Management Agency Director Mary Hallman-Glass said most are now operational after repairs to the system were made again last week.
After an extended effort to find a service provider willing to come to Franklin County to repair the emergency siren system, Hallman-Glass said Amory, Miss.-based Precision Communications came and fixed the system's encoder.
A county-wide test last Monday resulted in an erroneous chemical spill warning being transmitted over the system, so Precision workers returned to install a new encoder this week.
A second test, this time at 9 a.m., Thursday morning, indicated some sirens are now receiving signals properly, but the Tharptown and East Franklin sirens did not function and Precision officials are working remotely to determine what the problem is.
While a majority of the 32 sirens are operational, Hallman-Glass said there are several that remain in need of repair.
Franklin County EMA maintains nine of the 32 sirens. The remaining 23 are the responsibility of the municipality in which they are located. Russellville has 11 sirens in the city. Red Bay has six, Hodges and Vina two each and there are two maintained by the Town of Phil Campbell.
“As of right now, all of the county sirens are supposed to be working except East Franklin and they are preparing a quote to fix it,” Hallman-Glass said. “If the sirens for the cities are not working properly, those cities and towns are responsible for fixing them.”
Hallman-Glass said five of the six Red Bay sirens have been repaired and parts have been ordered for the one that's not operational.
The siren at Northwest-Shoals Community College was struck by lightning, Hallman-Glass said, and Phil Campbell officials are waiting on a quote to repair it.
In Hodges, the town's two sirens are not operational, and officials have turned in a work order to repair them. The delays result from companies unwilling to come to Franklin County to do repairs.
“Precision is the only company we know of in the surrounding area willing to do on-site repairs. There's another company who can only do minor repairs but we don't want to have to pay twice if they can't do the work,” Hallman-Glass said.
The county's Emergency Operations Center is where weather and/or emergency alerts originate. That system is controlled by an encoder, which was replaced this week. Hallman-Glass said the sirens are controlled from the EOC.
“We received a grant for the installation of the siren system and each city got their sirens through that grant, but they took over responsibility of maintenance once they were installed,” Hallman-Glass said.
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