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Washington County replaces storm sirens
Washington residents will cease to hear ‘this is a test’ monthly refrain
Kalen McCain
Apr. 1, 2025 3:50 pm
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
WASHINGTON — Washington County has nearly completed a roughly yearlong process of replacing most of its outdoor warning sirens, and has installed a handful of new ones around the community in the process.
Marissa Reisen, the county’s emergency management director until last Friday, said the changes would standardize the area’s storm sirens, which have long operated as a patchwork of different brands with different sounds and parts.
The wave of replacements was driven by system-wide reevaluations following Wellman’s tornado in 2023, where an outdoor siren failed because of an electrical issue. Reisen said the countywide system was getting older than ideal, compared to newer models that don’t rely on human input.
“One of the big pieces of this project is a software program that we purchased, that takes information straight from the weather service, and then when a warning is issued in our area … the software will go ahead receive that information, then set off the sirens,” she said. “It takes that step out of dispatchers’ hands so that when stuff’s going down and everything’s getting crazy when storms are rolling in, it’s one less thing they have to worry about.”
The replacements came alongside relocations and new siren setups around the county, changing the outdoor warning systems at the following places:
- Ainsworth: moved from the water tower to Oak Park, plus a new siren at Marr Park
- Brighton: same location in town, new siren at Lake Darling
- Crawfordsville: same location
- Kalona: siren at fire station moved to Mid-Prairie schools, plus a new siren in SouthTown
- Riverside: Both sirens kept in “same general location,” with a new one installed near Highland High School/Middle School.
- Washington: Downsized from five sirens to four, with equal coverage. Washington’s sirens are now located at North Park, Adams Street, Washington High School and the Wellness Park.
- Wellman: same location.
“We’ve got some areas in the county that, it wasn’t a bad idea for them to have coverage,” Reisen said. “Marr Park is close to Ainsworth, so they can sometimes hear the siren in Ainsworth, but with the fact that they’ve got campers from all over, having a siren there is better for the people that are there.”
Reisen said the new setup came with another change for residents of Washington, specifically: the devices will no longer play recorded spoken messages when they test.
“It wasn’t a feature that we required,” Reisen said. “I don’t know that it would ever really be useful, because it’s not perfect. We could get as much information out with cellphones now, as we could with a talking siren.”
In total, the upgrades came with a $594,578, the bulk of which was financed with a nearly $450,000 grant from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation. The rest was funded with $100,000 from the emergency management department, $30,000 from the county’s general fund, and a contribution of $15,000 each from the cities of Brighton, Kalona, Riverside, Wellman and Washington, according to Reisen.
Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com
