The weekend storms may have rolled out, but concerns over tornado sirens linger.
While many people get THV11 weather alerts on their cellphones and TVs, many still listen for the tornado siren. It’s a signal to take cover and people count on it to be right.
Saturday, tornado warnings were issued, but Little Rock and North Little Rock sirens went off several minutes later.
“I got the tornado warning on my phone, but then afterward, probably about 15 almost 20 minutes had past and then the sirens began to kick in.” Little Rock resident Gilbert Alaquinez said.
“I’m glad that I was looking at the TV and my phone,” Alaquinez said.
Little Rock Police Captain Ty Tyrell said the National Weather Service alerted their office about the tornado warning at 9:55 am, and the communications center sounded off the sirens 15 minutes later.
“It was very busy in the center and Saturday’s we staff the center a little bit lighter because our call load is different. So, when we got the notification from the National Weather Service the fire ground dispatcher was busy talking to some firefighters, didn’t hear everything in the background, called them back to verify. And in the mix of calling them back the supervisor wasn’t clearly notified so it took longer,” Tyrrell said.
He said it’s a mistake he’s making sure will never happen again.
“It was not my dispatchers’ fault, it was not my supervisors fault, it’s really my fault because I don’t have a clear procedure in place that’s very simple, When it gets busy and it gets foggy like that with everything going on and all the noise, that they can clearly get through,” Tyrrell said.
"We're going to do some retraining to make sure that everybody in the room's up to speed and not just a select few and then we're going to clearly post the instructions so that we don't have this happening in the future,” Tyrrell said.
Tyrrell said citizen safety is his top priority.
"The citizens deserve better. it's a critical notification that has to go out and they deserve to be notified in a timely fashion and we are taking steps to make sure we get that notification out just as quickly as we can,” Tyrrell said.
North Little Rock officials said they're aware of an eight-minute delay, and they plan to fix it by replacing the current manually-triggered sirens with an automatic system.
"Hopefully they can work on that or do something about it because next time, you know, it can be deadly,” Alaquinez said.
THV11 also spoke to the Pulaski County Emergency Management Department. Their spokesperson said their sirens went off on time and reminds residents to have multiple ways to get weather alerts during severe weather.