Commission learns wail of tornado sirens Tuesday took some by surprise

The wail of tornado sirens took some Shawnee County residents by surprise early Tuesday evening, Shawnee County commissioners learned Thursday.

After the National Weather Service issued tornado warnings affecting the northeast and northwest parts of the county, the county’s emergency management department followed its standard practice of initially setting off outdoor sirens for three minutes countywide to get the public’s attention, said emergency management director Dusty Nichols.

After that, the department sounded those sirens in only the warned areas, Nichols told Commissioners Bob Archer, Bill Riphahn and Kevin Cook at their morning meeting.

“A lot of people really liked it because there were some people out on their lawnmowers and so forth that had no idea we had severe weather in the area,” Nichols said.

The sirens stopped sounding when the storms involved left the county going north.

The National Weather Service reported Wednesday that one of them — which measured at EF-0 on the Fujita scale used to measure tornado intensity — touched down east of Rossville and went north/northeast for 12.64 miles, damaging trees and power lines while generating wind speeds of up to 80 mph.

Severe weather and flooding will continue to be concerns in coming days in this area, where recent rainfalls have saturated the soil so that “any rain we get on top is going to raise our water levels, lake levels, reservoirs, all that kind of stuff, pretty fast,” Nichols said.

He came to the lectern right after commissioners learned the county’s aquatics centers will all open Saturday, weather permitting.

“Speaking of aquatic facilities, Mother Nature’s going to make the entire region one the next couple of days, it sounds like,” Nichols quipped.

He asked commissioners and the public to “Please be weather aware.”

The emergency management department only sounds the outdoor sirens if tornado warnings are in effect, Nichols added.

He spoke during a meeting in which commissioners also:

• Voted 3-0 to authorize the issuance of industrial revenue bonds in the amount of $13 million for the Fort Wayne, Ind.-based Equity Investment Group’s planned $31.4 million project to renovate the shopping center at the southeast corner of S.W. 17th and Wanamaker Road while bringing in several new tenants.

• Voted 3-0 to authorize the county’s public works department to hire a replacement for deputy director Tom Flanagan at an annual total in salary and benefits of $99,572.50, with that department planning to have Flanagan stay on temporarily to help the new employee learn the job.

• Voted 3-0 to approve the issuance of permits to all 23 applicants who sought authorization to operate fireworks stands at sites between June 27 and July 5 at specific sites in unincorporated Shawnee County.

• Voted 3-0 to defer action until their June 3 meeting on a proposed $778,319.50 project budget to replace artificial turf at the Lake Shawnee Girl’s Softball Complex.

• Learned that the county is “right on budget” financially for the first four months of this year.

Tim Hrenchir, [email protected]