Residents won’t be able to hear the siren’s call in case of an emergency in the City of Greenville. Slightly more than half of the City of Greenville’s emergency warning sirens are functional.
As of today, of the seven sirens in Greenville, four of them are working and three of them are not, according to Fire Chief Doug Caison, who delivered a status report to the City Council Tuesday.
But the news got even worse. Caison says that all of the sirens had stopped working two months ago. City Manager Steven Alexander told the Council he has instructed the city staff to consider all work needed on the sirens as emergency repairs, in order to speed up the process.
With the spring severe thunderstorm season approaching, the city is left with a major dilemma; whether to continue to maintain the current system, pay for a significant refurbishing of a system that is only halfway through its expected life span, pay even more for a more extensive system, or just do away with the warning sirens altogether.
Strong thunderstorms on April 3, 2012 produced 17 tornadoes across the region, including four in Hunt County.