Some Metro East residents have gone years without working outdoor weather sirens
By Deion Broxton
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ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Missouri (KMOV) — Some residents in St. Clair County have been advocating for outdoor weather sirens for decades.
St. Clair County Emergency Management confirmed to News 4 the cities with and without working weather sirens. The cities without working sirens include Brooklyn, Cahokia Heights, Dupo, East St. Louis, East Carondelet, Sauget and Washington Park.
The cities with working sirens include Belleville, Freeburg, Mascoutah, St. Libory, New Baden, Fairmont City, Shiloh, Swansea, Fayetteville, Caseyville and O’Fallon.
“We used to have them go off all the time right over at the Village Hall,” said lifelong Cahokia Heights resident Sandy Eversman. “And it’s big a one, and you can hear go off for miles around.”
“Never have we had them in Dupo, East Carondelet, Cahokia, Alorton, Centreville. I’ve never heard them,” said Laura Rosenkranz, a former assistant fire chief at the Praire Du Pont Fire Department. “Because a lot of the older folks—they’re like ‘we had a siren, what’s happened to it.’”
“There’s communities that we get calls from, periodically, wanting to know why a certain area doesn’t have them,” said St. Clair County Emergency Management Director Herb Simmons.
Simmons told News 4 it’s on cities and villages to establish working weather sirens. The county only works on the testing.
St. Clair took over 911 dispatch for Cahokia Heights more than five years ago. Simmons explained part of the process included the city setting up its weather sirens with the county, but the city never coordinated with the county.
“We told them how they have to go about getting that done in order to get that system transferred up here to where all the other sirens are activated; those get to—but here it’s 2022 and we have not received that information,” Simmons added.
St. Clair County offers the Code Red Warning System for cell phone users.
Some residents argue the elderly aren’t well-versed at using smartphones and people don’t always have their phones on them.
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