Western Springs officials are grateful Sunday night’s tornadoes did not move through their village, but wish their 911 dispatch center had sounded the emergency siren as a warning.
The head of the dispatch center agrees.
“We are conducting an internal review … to determine what messages did we get, when did we get them and what people did when they got them,” said Mike O’Connor, executive director of the Lyons Township Area Communications Center.
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Western Springs, La Grange, La Grange Park and Countryside in 2017 consolidated their dispatch services in the new communications center, which is housed at the La Grange Police Station.
When someone in those towns calls 911, the communication center answers. The center also can sound tornado sirens in Western Springs, La Grange and La Grange Park. Countryside’s sirens are controlled by another agency, O’Connor said.
At least some residents received a loud alert on their mobile phones from the National Weather Service Sunday night, advising them to go to their basements because there was a tornado warning until 12 a.m.
People also can sign up for alerts through the Smart911 system, which automatically sends out warnings.
In addition, the sirens are designed to warn people outside to seek shelter, said O’Connor, who was not at the dispatch center Sunday night.
“We have to manually activate the sirens,” O’Connor said, which the center is supposed to do based on certain criteria, including if a police officer or firefighter reports seeing a funnel cloud, if a village official, such as the police chief, fire chief or village administrator directs the sirens to be activated, if the center receives reports of funnel cloud sightings from multiple members of the public or, “if we get a tornado warning from the National Weather Service.”
Based on those criteria and the conditions Sunday night, O’Connor said, “I believe they should have been activated.” The center can activate the sirens in all its member towns or only individual towns, he said.
“Many neighboring communities, particularly in DuPage County where the tornados ultimately emerged, did activate their warning systems and they were heard by many Western Springs residents,” village officials stated on the village website, wsprings.com.
Western Springs disagrees with the decision made by their dispatch center not to activate the sirens and asked the center to review their policies, the statement reads.
“Fortunately, there was no significant storm damage,” but the safety of residents is of the utmost importance, village officials stated. “The village is working to ensure that residents are notified of any potentially dangerous weather situation in multiple ways — including the use of the tornado sirens, when necessary.”