Tornado sirens cause confusion: Why some were delayed while others seemed to last too long

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - As severe storms rolled through the metro on Tuesday, sparking multiple tornado warnings, some people in Jackson County said they heard sirens after the storm ed.

Meanwhile, others in Cass County said they never heard sirens at all.

The City of Belton has multiple methods of setting sirens off in the city.

Wednesday morning, they did their monthly test, setting it off manually, which worked.

That was a different story on Tuesday, after a tornado warning was issued for parts of Belton. Instead of hearing the sirens right away, they went silent.

Emergency Management officials in Belton said they used polygon activation.

“When the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning, they put a polygon over that certain area that is impacted by that warning and that will automatically trigger our sirens,” said Claire Canaan, the director.

Canaan said there was an unexpected disruption responsible for that siren activation. They tried to sound the sirens manually several times and ultimately it worked. Still, the unexpected disruption led to a delay.

“The secondary method that we utilized was successful in getting those to sound, but it did take us a little bit of time to get to that point to really figure out what was causing them not to sound,” Canaan said.

Over in Jackson County, many residents heard the sirens go off a few times between 2 and 3 p.m. Some said they heard it well after the threat seemed to be clear.

“It seemed like they went off for a long time because they had a warning and then a warning and then another warning, so we’re going to push the button anytime we get a warning,” said Christopher Carroll, Acting Emergency Manager.

Carroll said those sirens were no mistake.

“If any portion of northern or southern Jackson County is within the tornado polygon, even if it’s just a little bit, we have to sound the sirens for the whole zone,” explained Carroll.

Emergency management doesn’t have the capability or the time to sound off the sirens individually, with 139 sirens across the metro, which is why they’re split into zones.

They push a button and the whole zone goes off.

“We’d rather sound the sirens than explain why we necessarily didn’t need to than not sound the sirens and unfortunately have a situation like they did in St. Louis,” said Carroll.

As for Belton, the city’s emergency management said they are in with the siren vendor, who is running tests to see why the sirens did not go off instantly.

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