The city of Garland is prepping for severe weather season with new storm sirens.
The first six of 15 new outdoor sirens have arrived and are being strategically installed at outdoor locations.
Garland’s previous siren system was taken offline in 2011 due to lack of reliability and aged equipment. After two years without the sirens, city leaders now have the money and equipment to take action.
The new sirens will feature the latest technology including flashing LED lights that will alert persons who are hearing impaired that they need to seek shelter and additional information.
The city said even though the sirens are in the process of going up, the new warning system is designed for people outdoors. Residents shouldn’t expect to hear the warning indoors.
"We are only locating them in strategic gathering spots we are not going to do complete coverage," said Mollie Rivas from the Garland Emergency Management.
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City leaders said they've done their best to strategize the storm plan, but they add in a day of social media and cell phones there are several ways of alerting residents to the danger, such as Weather Warn and their reverse 9-11 system called CODERed.
"Unfortunately there's not one silver bullet method of receiving warnings, of so it's really important for us to have a whole toolbox full of methods that we can use," said Rivas.
The city wants to have 15 sirens up and running by the end of May.
