COLLINSVILLE, Ill. – The city of Collinsville has 16 new outdoor sirens and will be conducting tests on Friday ahead of severe weather season.

These new sirens are part of a very robust system installed over the last 12 months.

“Well, when you put in new items and new technology, you get a couple of bugs. And we’re just trying to make sure all the bugs are worked out before spring hits,” Collinsville Fire Chief John Bailot said.

Bailot says this new system replaces an old, 1980s vintage system that had to be triggered manually.

“It automatically interacts with the National Weather Service,” he said. “So, when the National Weather Service has a tornado warning or a destructive thunderstorm warning, our system will activate, where before it had to be manually activated.”

The system can still be manually activated by their communication techs if need be.
The testing on Friday won’t sound like their monthly test.

“We always like to make sure our citizens know what’s happening. And we expect short bursts of sirens. Not for them to be running for like a minute or typical three-minute run or anything like that. But it could be a couple all over the city,” Bailot said.

“It may just be an isolated area. The technicians will be in town doing some fine tuning and they just need to make sure that they work.”

The advanced technology of these sirens allows them to be sounded based on the national weather service’s warning polygon. Only sirens within the polygon will go off, not all of the others.

“A lot of people would hear sirens and then what’s the first thing they do? They go outside and look out,” Bailot said. “Open the door and look outside and there’s nothing there. They get complacent. And that happened over in St. Louis County. Well, now when that siren goes off, that area is under the direct tornado warning.”

It’s important to remember that the outdoor warning system is meant to warn those outdoors and not inside or wake you up in the middle of the night. For that you want to make sure you have a NOAA weather radio and alerts to your phone.