MICHELLE WILLARD, Post Staff Writer
Posted: Sunday, April 26, 2009 7:35 am

With the Good Friday Tornado in the past, local governments have begun discussing the best ways to protect citizens in cases of severe weather events.

Some argue warning sirens are the best approach, but Murfreesboro looked into a system eight years ago and decided it wasn’t the best use of taxpayer money.

“We felt like the taxpayers wouldn’t be more safe with the sirens available,” Mayor Tommy Bragg said about the council’s 2001 decision not to install warning sirens across town.

Bragg said the main issues were the way the city is laid out and covering the area, as well as sirens are most effective when citizens are outside their homes.

In 2001, the city looked into paying almost $500,000 to cover from Compton Road in the north to Riverdale High School in the south and Blackman High School in the west to MTSU’s siren in the east.

According to council minutes from Nov. 1, 2001, the city unanimously voted down the proposal because of a lack of community support for the project.

The minutes also list multiple alternatives to warning sirens and all cost less taxpayer money.

“When we looked at it in 2001, we looked at all technology available,” Bragg said, citing the Internet, television, radio and weather radios as sources for severe weather warnings.

Even though the city has no immediate plans for erecting sirens across the city, Tennessee’s General Assembly is considering a bill that beginning in 2012 will bring warning sirens to the most populous parts of the state.

The bill would require the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency to erect warning sirens in areas with at least 40 people per square mile, which includes most of Middle and East Tennessee and the Memphis, Jackson and Waverly areas in West Tennessee.

According to TEMA, at least 250 sirens would be needed to start covering the state with warning sirens at an estimated cost of more than $10 million per year for the first two years to the state.

Counties would be shouldered with the cost of maintaining the systems at an estimated cost of more than $100,000 per year.

The bill was referred back to the House State and Local Committee earlier this week and passed the Senate Ways and Means Committee in March.

Bragg said the city council will continue looking into warning sirens.

“I’m sure that we will continue to look and see if the technology is good and citizens see it as a good investment,” Bragg said.

He added Nashville is beginning to post sirens near parks and schools, which is something Murfreesboro may consider in the future.

In the meantime Rutherford County Emergency Management Director Roger Allen suggests all residents purchase a weather radio.

“I definitely recommend residents get one,” Allen said.

The radios can be found at most retail outlets, from Target to Wal-Mart, for less than $40. The radios pick up signals broadcast by the National Weather Service when warnings or watches are issued.

Allen said the radios are more effective because people tend to be inside when severe weather hits.

Bragg agreed with the need for a weather radio, saying the sirens wouldn’t have sounded when the EF-1 tornado hit the Boys & Girls Club, because the National Weather Service never issued a warning for that storm.

Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com.