VALLEY VIEW, Texas — The single outdoor warning siren in Valley View, Texas did not work on the night of the devastating and deadly tornado.
But the chief of the volunteer fire department is pushing back against a slew of social media complaints by explaining the 1-mile range of the 1950s era system would have had no impact on a community struck by the tornado more than 3 miles away.
The outdoor warning siren in Valley View is directly across the street from the local community center where a team of volunteers is hard at work this week collecting supplies and distributing them to the hundreds of Cooke County families trying to piece their lives back together.
"This just shows that we have each other's back," said Valley View City Secretary Ashley McGowan who is helping organize the effort.
But the night of the tornado what was not working was the town's one outdoor warning siren on the east side of S. Lee Street. The lone siren, on a pole behind a Twice Pure Water and Twice the Ice machine, has ground-level electronic controls locked inside a protective cage.
"When we pushed the button it didn't work," said Valley View Volunteer Fire Department Chief Zack Kupper. The warning system, owned and powered by the city of Valley View, is operated manually by members of the volunteer fire department. When bad weather approaches, a firefighter unlocks the cage and presses a single button to activate the rotating siren.
Kupper says that on the night of the tornado they tried to do exactly that, but the system would not activate. With the storm raging, he says they issued a social media alert about the siren failure and then rushed next to reports of heavy damage more than three miles south in unincorporated areas of Cooke County.
"Our policy is we test the first Thursday of every month at 2 p.m.," Kupper said.
But he says that on the most recent testing date, the weather was bad that day as well. Kupper says they adhere to the regular testing schedule, on good weather days, so that residents of Valley View are not confused by perceived false alarms.
As for the impact of the siren not working, Kupper says it has an audible range of approximately one mile. The Cooke County community devastated by the tornado is outside city limits, far outside that range.
"We're standing at the siren and the community that was hit is three miles away," Kupper said while showing WFAA the siren controls.
Thursday the siren is working again. Kupper says a previously undetected wiring problem has since been repaired. He says that prior to this latest storm, the city and county were already in discussions about improving warning systems throughout the county.
"Don't rely on one source of information whenever there is a danger of disaster or danger to your life," Kupper said in reference to the lone warning siren. "You want to have as many resources as you can to be able to save yourself from that," he said of the modern warning systems that social media, radio, and television provide.
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