City Of Tulsa Updating Storm Siren System

The City of Tulsa continues work on updating the storm sirens. They're replacing old technology with new ones that put out more sound.

Tulsa's network of outdoor sirens now includes 89 of them, scattered across the city, and that's one more than last year. A new siren was added this year in a neighborhood at 4100 South 177th East Avenue.

The biggest change is a continuing move away from the older style sirens that work, but only send out sound in one direction, they rotate to cover a larger area, but if it's not pointed towards you, you won't hear it.

Most of those have been replaced with newer models that send out sound in all directions at once.

Jaime Ott with Tulsa Emergency Management, said, "It's just a single stack, it doesn't rotate, less maintenance, easier maintenance on it, plus it has the sound. The diameter of the sound is a lot larger than the ones that just rotate."

The new ones, in ideal conditions, can be heard just over a mile away. But's that's only outdoors, in fact, they're not intended to alert people indoors or on the road. That's what weather radios and weather apps on mobile phones are for.