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Weather alert radios provide helpful information, urgent warnings.
The Jan. 12 Union County tornado possibly untucked the technological safety blanket-televisions, radios, sirens-many have come to rely on. "We didn't have any warning the tornado was even coming. It took everybody by surprise," said Jackie Wiley, Union County's emergency management coordinator. "In this day in age, most of the radio stations are on what I call autopilot." Automated radio disc jockeys can mislead listeners through preprogrammed song lists and voiceovers that give the appearance of a live broadcast. It is also common for radio stations to farm out late-night programming to syndicated disc jockeys hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away. Emergency warnings are broadcast on many of these stations upon release, but usually warnings run only once with no forthcoming information. "There are several local radio stations [in Union County], but at that time of night, there weren't any to my knowledge that weren't already on automatic programming," Wiley said. "That's a little problem that we ran into that we're going to have to look at-an alternative way of alerting the public." One answer is National Oceanic Atmospheric Association (NOAA) Weather Radio (NWR), a network of nationwide radio stations broadcasting continuous weather and emergency information from local National Weather Service (NWS) offices; Arkansas's local office is in North Little Rock. The more than 900 NWR transmitters can be can be heard on a special receiver, the weather alert radio, and on some police scanners. The radios are controlled, in Arkansas, by more than 20 transmitters in and around the state, such as the transmitter in Memphis that provides emergency broadcast for parts of eastern Arkansas. When the NWS declares an emergency warning, weather alert radios click on with an alarm followed by the warning. It's the same warning system that broadcast on television and commercial radio. "People are accustomed to hearing the emergency warning on commercial radio or the TV, and you will be warned if you are watching TV at that time," NWS Warning Coordinating Meteorologist John Robinson said. "But the last six tornado fatalities in Arkansas have all been when people were asleep, and there was a tornado warning in effect for every one of those tornadoes. People lost their lives because they were simply not aware that a tornado was coming and they didn't have a weather radio." "We strongly encourage everyone to put a weather alert radio in their house," said Bill Muesham, the public education coordinator for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, which has provided each Arkansas school district with a weather alert radio. Partly because of the Jan. 12 tornado, Union County recently erected a NOAA weather transmitter, and Wiley hopes residents will acquire the weather alert radios. "It's a big step for us because not only is weather put out [on the radios], but things like Amber Alerts or chemical spills or evacuation are now broadcast through this transmitter," Wiley added. "Our goal is to make weather alert radios as common as smoke alarms in houses," Robinson said. For more information about the broadcast and weather alert radios, visit the NWS NOAA Web site, www.nws.noaa.gov. Weather alert radio prices vary form $20-$200.
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