Henry County has A Problem!!!
Henry County has many problems, from a lack of infrastructure and maintenance to crime. But we have another problem you may not be aware of that can cost a lot of Henry County citizens to lose their lives and the lives of loved ones. After a survey of all the tornado sirens in the county, it is blatantly obvious that Henry County has been negligent in the placement and number of sirens throughout the county. Now we know that people will say the sirens are for people who are outside. This is a lie and a misnomer. People will say that they have their cellphones to get notified of bad weather, this is dangerous. In very bad storms, cell towers can and do go down, and cannot notify you of bad weather. The two very good ways of being informed of bad storms are, one, good siren coverage in the county, and two is to have a weather alert radio that can wake you up from sleep. In fact, it should be mandatory that all residents must have a weather radio in their homes provided by the builder. Now let’s look at the sirens we have in the county and see what kind of coverage they offer in the county.
As you can see from the photo below this area of Henry County has a very large gap of coverage of the County's tornado siren system. This area is along Highway 138 Highway 42 East of Stockbridge approximately 3 to 4 miles. Many of the communities here are of Mobile Home Design and newer neighborhoods that have been built. A lack of warning during a tornado could be very deadly and costly to not only the citizens but to the county as well.
This photo below could be considered one of the most dangerous areas for not having tornado siren coverage. This area is just North of Stockbridge and does not cover the Stockbridge High School. That's right the school where your children are taught are unprotected by tornado sirens.
The next photo below covers a wide area of Southeastern Henry County the Ola area to be more specific as you can see from the map the north Ola Park is not covered which is just adjacent to the Ola High School and Middle School that are not covered by the tornado sirens of Henry County. This area has seen tremendous growth and development over the years and yet Henry County has not updated or expanded the tornado sirens to help cover and to protect its citizens in this area.
The last photo below will show you just how the county has not thought clearly or logically about the placement of their tornado sirens. You can see three sirens and their sound waves there are overlapping; it appears two of the sirens are about a mile or less apart. This area is in the Kelly Town area around Knight Road. This area also has had a lot of growth in recent years and is unprotected. The citizens are at very grave risk in this area.
So as you can see, Henry County has been very negligent in protecting the citizens from severe weather and tornadoes by not placing enough and correcting their tornado siren system. I would urge everyone to contact the County Commissioners and talk to them about your concerns about the lack of doing the right thing to protect the citizens again. I must reiterate tornado sirens or for everyone, not just if you are outside. We must insist that Henry County do the right thing and protect citizens by upgrading and installing more tornado sirens so that we may be protected during severe weather seasons. We have already had tornadoes increasing in Henry County as of late, and we have received a lot of damage, and citizens have been injured and killed by these tornadoes. As we move forward, storms will be getting more violent and unpredictable. As the County continues to have uncontrollable growth with clear-cutting trees and building houses, this has a tremendous effect on the weather in our County. We will be covering this in another blog post to come up soon, but in the meantime, please contact the Henry County Commissioners to voice your concerns, and please get yourself a NOAA weather alert radio.
Blog Staff
Alfred Britt
Mike Moon Ph.D.
Very well done. There is a huge problem with not enough weather sirens in the county. I remember that you could not hear the siren where we lived east of Stockbridge in a mobile home. That is an area that needs to be able to hear the weather sirens. But like the other day when the storm hit south of McDonough near Locust Grove they had no warning at all. The local NWS dropped the ball once again by not putting out warnings on this storm.
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