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Officials in Tennessee have been facing questions after tornado sirens allegedly failed to sound to alert residents to an incoming storm that killed six people.
Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms tore through Tennessee on 9 December, destroying homes, overturning trucks and uprooting trees, leaving an estimated 35,000 people without power and many families homeless.
Three people died in Clarksville, while another three people died in Madison, including a father and his two-year-old son when a mobile home rolled onto their house, the Metro Nashville Police Department said.
A further 23 people were injured in the extreme weather.
As officials assessed the damage, several residents spoke out to say that they didn’t hear tornado warning sirens go off as the storm approached.
Tornado warning sirens are used across Tennessee and other parts of the US to give people an early warning to oncoming severe weather events.
Since 2003, such sirens have been used in the state to alert residents to imminent danger from tornadoes.
For example in 2013, a $2m grant was proed to Nashville county to upgrade the system with new siren equipment to emit an easier-to-hear warning signal, according to the Nashville and Dason County website.
The system was then upgraded in 2020 to bring the total number of sirens in the state from 93 to 113, it states.
Debris covers the area around homes destroyed in the West Creek Farms neighbourhood of Clarksville, Tennessee on Sunday
(AP)
However, residents said the sirens allegedly did not go off in parts of the state.
Residents in parts of Montgomery County told FOX17 that they didn’t hear any sirens until after the storm had passed through the area.
George Cabrera, from Clarksville, told the outlet he didn’t hear the sirens until around an hour after he saw the tornado take effect outside his home.
“Once I ensured my family was OK, I put on some shoes and a coat and I ran over to assist the house that was demolished. My whole time outside I didn’t hear anything – it was maybe an hour later I heard,” he said.
Jimmie Edwards, chief of Montgomery County Emergency Services, was asked about the apparent lack of sirens sounding in a press conference that weekend.
He said he “couldn’t respond as to why the warning sirens didn’t go off until after the fact”.
A Montgomery County EMA spokesperson later told The Independent that the sirens did go off “as far as we know”.
“The warning sirens did go off, and all of them went off as far as we know,” they said.
“Jimmie Edwards was responding to a question that he was asked by a reporter. He said he couldn’t respond because he did not know anything about the sirens not going off.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the City of Clarksville also said the sirens went off but that they could not confirm whether the sirens were sounded before or after the storm passed.
“We are confident that the community’s tornado sirens are working properly. They are tested every Sunday,” the spokesperson told The Independent.
“There have been conflicting reports from residents about when the siren was activated on Saturday, December 9, 2023. What we can confirm is that the sirens did sound on that afternoon. The City and County along with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) are researching the timeline of events.
“We cannot confirm whether the tornado touched down before the National Weather Service (NWS) Tornado Watch was elevated to a NWS-issued Tornado Warning. The Tornado Watch was issued at 11:39 a.m.”
They continued: “Tornado sirens are intended to warn people who are outdoors – and in the vicinity of a tornado – to find a safe place and take shelter.”
The Nashville mayor’s office said that the sirens also worked “correctly” in Nashville.
The accuracy of tornado siren systems have come under question before.
A resident examines the debris from a friend’s destroyed house in the West Creek Farms neighbourhood on Sunday, Dec. 10, 2023, Clarksville, Tenn.
(AP)
In 2019, a drop in radio signal caused Nashville’s tornado warning system to repeat a siren cycle.
Meanwhile, an investigation by Scripps News earlier this year found a number of tornado siren systems across the US are outdated or failing, leaving millions of people vulnerable during extreme weather events.
The tornado had a devastating impact on Tennessee.
Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts declared a state of emergency in the city on Saturday night and imposed a curfew.
Footage posted to social media showed a huge fireball erupting south of the city of Goodlettsville as a tornado swept through the area.
In the aftermath, rescue teams searched for survivors and surveyed damage on Sunday morning, the Nashville Office of Emergency Management said on X.
“This is devastating news and our hearts are broken for the families of those who lost loved ones,” Mayor Pitts said in a statement.
“The city stands ready to help them in their time of grief.”
The tornado also left thousands without power. PowerOutage.us, a tracking website, has logged over 35,000 reports of power cuts across the state. A spokesperson for Nashville Electric Service said that while it had managed to restore power to 18,000 customers, there was no estimated time for full restoration due to the significant damage at substations in Hendersonville and North Nashville.
A car is buried under rubble on Main Street after a tornado hit Hendersonville, Tennessee, 9 December2023
(via REUTERS)
According to CNN, it could take several days for the worst-hit areas to get their electricity back.
Meanwhile, two water companies in Sumner County are running on generator power, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said.
Two dozen more tornado reports were received across five states on Saturday, sparked by a sprawling weather system that brought storms to a large swathe of the eastern US, the National Weather Service said.
It came nearly two years to the day after 41 tornadoes were recorded through a handful of heartland states, including 16 in Tennessee and eight in Kentucky. A total of 81 people died in Kentucky alone during that extreme weather event.
This article was amended on 19 December 2023. An earlier version inaccurately stated that sirens hadn’t sounded in Nashville when residents had in fact claimed they hadn’t heard sirens in Montgomery County. The article also inaccurately quoted Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell as saying he could not explain why the sirens had not gone off, whereas this should have been attributed to Jimmie Edwards, chief of Montgomery County Emergency Services. Updated statements about the sirens from Montgomery County, Clarksville and Nashville officials have also been added.
