(Guadalupe County) — Following an influx of calls, emails, and social media messages from concerned residents, particularly those living near the Guadalupe River — the Guadalupe County Office of Emergency Management is reassuring the public today that its emergency siren system is fully functional and remains under continuous oversight.
Patrick Pinder, Guadalupe County emergency management coordinator and fire marshal, says he understands the heightened concern due to recent flooding but wants to assure everyone that the sirens are working as intended and are closely monitored 24/7 by emergency staff.
Guadalupe County operates 23 emergency sirens placed strategically across the county. He says these sirens are activated to warn residents of major weather events or other emergencies requiring immediate action.
“The sirens are not only located along the river. We have one in downtown Marion. So, triggering the sirens, they are not flood sirens. They are notification sirens. So, they notify you for any major weather event that get you to tune into any preferred media outlet — those who need to hear anything on the radio, we would send them to the radio station –turn to (KWED) the radio station, and listen for the message because if there is a major issue, we are also going to push everything (through) social media. We are going to push everything off through the radios. We are going to send it to our emergency notifications. We also have IPAWS which is what you get on your phones for the weather service. We will push all the information out to the community when there is an issue that needs to be addressed and the residents need to know,” said Pinder.
Now although IPAWS or the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System is an additional warning system, Pinder says the July 5th flooding would not have met the criteria for an IPAWS’ activation here in Guadalupe County.
He says IPAWS, a federal tool managed by FEMA, allows emergency managers to issue Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), Emergency Alert System (EAS) broadcasts, and NOAA Weather Radio messages.
What was activated, however, was the REAN or the Regional Emergency Alert Notification system. Pinder says this free service sends real-time alerts by phone, email, or text. During the July 5th flooding event, REAN was activated to issue a Guadalupe River Flow Advisory, which urged residents in flood-prone areas to secure loose items and stay vigilant.
Pinder says the alert reached 2,447 registered contacts, with over 1,100 confirming receipt of that notification.
Pinder says not only do they take their emergency response serious, but they take the warning systems just as serious. He says the lessons learned from other historical floods in the area have helped them to develop a stronger approach to keeping even more people safe.
“There are thresholds that the county has when it is at full capacity. We have a 5,000cfs notification. We have a 10,000cfs notification, a 15cfs, a 20cfs and it goes up and working along with our partner GBRA (the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority), the phone calls are made. When the Lake Dunlap Dam issue happened, immediately GBRA called me and said this is what is going on and we saw 30,000cfs immediately occur so that triggered the sirens and notification at that time so the sirens are working. They are doing their tests. People have not heard the Saturday test but it does do a functionality test twice a day so people will hear the siren test this Saturday. If it is raining, it will not be activated. We will disarm it, but they are going to start hearing that test because that’s one of the things that we are getting calls on, well, we have not heard it go off.’ Well, it still works. We are just doing test on the backside,” said Pinder.
Pinder says recent weather events have also helped to spread the message about signing up for these alerts and to tune into AM 1580 KWED if those sirens are heard other than on Saturday at noon.
Residents are encouraged to sign up for REAN alerts by visiting: https://www.guadalupetx.gov/page/homepage.