Blissfield Fire Dept. Tracks Down Cause of Tornado Sirens’ Silence

A glitch in the triggering process of Blissfield’s tornado early warning system caused the village’s two remote sirens to remain silent during the critical minutes before the tornado touched down only 10 miles away in the early morning hours Sunday, June 6. The main siren at the fire station was activated and was audible to residents near the center of town.

As a result, many Blissfield residents did not hear the steady three- to five-minute uninterrupted wail of the siren that signals the sighting of a funnel cloud in the immediate area.

When reports from citizens of the malfunction surfaced the next day, Blissfield Township Fire Chief Gary Crist went to inspect the two remote sirens, one at the American Legion Post on the west side of town and one at Blissfield Manufacturing on the south side, both were found to be functional and to have full power.

Crist determined that the reason that the two outlying sirens failed to sound was because of radio interference. The sirens are activated by radio signals sent from the the base at the fire station. Only a certain radio frequency will activate them.

“I think that what happed is that the radio signal to the sirens was interrupted by other traffic,” Crist said. By traffic, he was referring to the use by other department radios of the Blissfield siren-activation frequency, or frequencies very close to it. Other emergency services were working simultaneously during the storm, generating many messages on many different wavelengths. This sort of activity can cause interference that would cause the sirens not to sound.

Crist said that the siren at the fire station can be activated manually and that action should have automatically activated the other sirens. He said that during the annual test for Tornado Safety Week recently, the sirens performed as expected. He also said that the station siren could be activated by radio signal but that it was programmed for a frequency different from the remote sirens.

All of the village sirens were found to be mechanically and electrically operational when they were inspected after the tornado. “We will be working to get all of the sirens on the same frequency, which should eliminate the problem in the future,” he said.