Why didn’t storm siren sound in Valley View for tornado? Would it even have helped?

In Reality Check stories, Star-Telegram journalists dig deeper into questions over facts, consequences and accountability. Read more. Story idea? RealityCheck@star-telegram.com.

When a tornado warning was called for Valley View and the surrounding area on Saturday night, firefighters rushed to the town’s lone storm siren to alert residents to the coming storm. But the siren did not sound.

“We tried to troubleshoot and, in just a minute or two the storm was coming in, we abandoned that idea, said let’s just get in the truck, let’s go seek our own shelter because it was coming for us,” said Valley View Fire Chief Zack Kupper.

The tornado ended up touching down about four miles south of town. It cut a path of destruction southeast, ripping an Shell gas station at Interstate 35 to shreds before moving on to make a direct hit on the Ray Roberts Marina about six and a half miles away.

The tornado left seven people dead and at least 100 injured near the city about 50 miles north of Fort Worth.

What caused the failure of Valley View’s storm siren?

When the sirens failed to work, the Valley View Fire Department posted the malfunction on Facebook and advised residents to take cover.

That post has since been taken down, but the department said in a statement posted Wednesday evening that the Valley View siren malfunctioned.

Kupper told the Star-Telegram that this was due to faulty wiring.

“We found that out after the fact,” he said. “This siren is connected to city hall, and city hall just has been going under renovations. And every time we’ve tested the siren, it’s been fine. There was one time several several months ago where we tested it didn’t work, and within two days, they had it fixed, it was retested, everything was good to go.”

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However, as the department said in Wednesday’s statement, the siren was not tested on the two months before the weekend’s storms due to weather conditions on the scheduled testing days.

Valley View tests its siren on the first Thursday of each month, but on the two previous first Thursdays, stormy conditions prevented those tests from being performed, so as not to send mixed signals.

“If there is a forecast of storms or showers, if there’s heavy clouds in the sky, we don’t test the siren, because that would just cause confusion,” Kupper said. “People are going to hear, they’re going to see clouds or see it’s raining, they’re going to be like, ‘Oh, the siren’s going off. It must be bad.’ But we’re doing a false warning at that point.”

Considering North Texas was gearing up for tornado season at the time of the canceled tests, the department should have rescheduled them, according to Michael Smith, a retired board certified meteorologist and former senior vice president of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions.

It is “not necessarily true” that rescheduling the test would cause confusion, Smith said. The Wichita, Kansas, resident said that the sirens in his county of Sedgwick are tested weekly, ensuring that if one test day is missed, residents will have another coming in six days.

“Having missed the test in April, and having missed the test in May, that’s just far too long,” he said. “The sirens need to be treated as mission critical equipment, and they need to be tested every month.”

Any problems that are identified in the system need to be fixed immediately, he said, adding that residents need to be kept in the loop about what is going on with the outdoor warning system.

“People need to be notified that there’s a problem and not to depend on the sirens even if you’re outdoors until they get them fixed, and from what I can determine that notice was not sent out to the public,” he said.

Kupper said the fire department followed town policy regarding the monthly tests, but it is reviewing that policy and will revise it if it is determined that changes are needed.

Would Valley View’s storm siren have helped saved lives?

The Valley View siren is a Thunderbolt outdoor warning siren, a discontinued product made by Illinois-based Federal Signal. The company makes emergency alert and public address systems, among other products.

The Thunderbolt siren first came on the market in the 1950s as a Cold War-era air raid siren and was later reissued as a multipurpose warning system for all kinds of disasters, both natural and man-made. It was discontinued in 1990, but many are still in operation across the country, especially in small municipalities with limited budgets, such as Valley View.

While Randy Lane, a resident in the path of the tornado’s destruction about four miles south of town, told the Star-Telegram on Sunday that he usually can hear the Valley View siren, Kupper said that may be true on a testing day with clear conditions, but it would be all but impossible on a night like Saturday with high winds and rain.

“So if you imagine the wind, the rain, and all that, and being inside your home, you’re not going to hear it that far out,” he said, adding that the siren is only meant to alert people who are outside.

Lane said he can usually hear a siren operated by the city of Sanger at an RV dealership about the same distance from him as the Valley View siren.

“I can usually hear it because I’m running between both of them four miles away,” Lane said. He went outside of his home to try and listen for them. “I couldn’t hear neither one of them.”

The Sanger siren, however, did sound, according to a statement from the Sanger Fire Department on Facebook.

Kupper said that the storm siren should be considered “one more link in the chain that provides warnings to people that are within range,” and highlighted the importance of other warning methods, such as cell phone notifications and television and radio alerts.

But Smith said that the siren’s role in public safety should not be sold short.

“This is a mission critical device, meaning lives are at stake,” he said. “The general public depends on it, just like they depend on the other elements of the warning system.”

Kupper noted that the people killed were hunkered down in their homes, but their homes were unfortunately in the direct path of the tornado.

“People sought shelter, people were inside their houses, and they would have never heard this siren to begin with,” he said.

Smith said it is “hard to know” how much of a difference the siren would have made, but pointed to video of two women who were caught in the tornado in their vehicle.

“Knowing that there were at least some people who didn’t know where the tornado was, where it was going, who should take shelter, I think we can say at minimum, the siren sounding would have been helpful,” he said. “At minimum.”

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