By Ryan Whisner
The Fort Atkinson City Council recently approved a $29,563 expenditure to upgrade and improve the city’s neighborhood storm warning sirens.
A maintenance review completed in April 2023 found some immediate repair and replacement needs at two of the siren locations.
Fort Atkinson has four storm warning sirens located on Cloute Hill on the water tower property, the roof of the municipal building, near the intersection of Jamesway and Endl Boulevard, and in Ralph Park near Wheels Park.
The Jamesway siren was found to be not functioning and the pole housing the Ralph Park siren was rotting.
Council members unanimously approved the replacement and relocation of the siren on Jamesway due to outdated technology and the replacement of the rotting pole for the siren in Ralph Park for a total of $29,563.
Work on the city’s siren system was not earmarked in either the 2023 general fund or the capital improvement budget.
“This was an unexpected expense,” said Fort Atkinson Fire Chief/Emergency Management Director Daryl Rausch.
However, Fort Atkinson City Manager Rebecca Houseman looked through the budget and found that Emergency Management has a small supply budget.
“It’s not often used, but that money is there in case of a severe storm comes through or flooding occurs, or we need additional supplies,” the chief said. “It’s somewhat of a preemptive or preventative budget that we had no plans to use.”
A total of $4,000 was drawn from the Emergency Management account with the remaining $25,563 coming from funds the city received via the American Rescue Plan Act.
“Replacement of the Jamesway siren was being requested because there are no parts available to fix it,” Rausch said. “We looked back, and I believe the sirens are 54 years old.”
The new siren will be larger and significantly louder.
As part of the replacement process, the chief is recommending the siren also be relocated.
According to the maintenance reports and visual inspection, three of the four sirens are not accessible from the public right-of-way. Rausch noted that the 2023 maintenance reports indicated that two were not accessible for review due to the ground being wet.
His suggestion is to move the Jamesway siren closer to the cub so it can be reached with a boom truck without driving on the lawn.
“It will still be on city property,” the chief said. “It’ll be close enough to the right-of-way that we won’t have to drive on the lawn to get to it.”
Rausch further recommended that in the future as other sirens are replaced that the city take a similar step to move the other two outlying sirens to accessible locations as well.
The cost of the replacement and relocation of the Jamesway siren totaled $22,788.
Meanwhile, Rausch said the pole housing the siren at Ralph Park is rotting. For the short term, he was requesting to replace the pole and leave the existing siren.
The storm warning sirens are activated when there is a tornado warning for the Fort Atkinson area. Rausch said the sirens will go off for approximately 3 minutes once activated.
“If another warning is issued or a change in that warning is issued, they’ll be activated again,” the chief said. “Our sirens are activated by our local police department although the county does have the ability to also activate them.”
When Rausch was first appointed as the city’s emergency management director, the county was activating all the sirens across the county anytime anything was reported in the county.
“We thought that we needed to be a little more specific for our community,” Rausch said.
Since then, the U.S. weather service has now gone to a geo-plotting system that only activates warnings for much smaller areas rather than entire counties at a time.
In addition, Rausch noted that there is no all-clear signal.
“Any all-clear signal will come through public media, TV stations radio stations, and those kinds of things,” he said.
Another thing Rausch pointed out is that the sirens are not meant to be heard inside a home.
“They’re meant to be outdoor warning sirens,” he said. “We certainly recommend that the community use other methods either through the county or through commercial apps on the phones for notification and also local TV and other media.”
Council member Davin Lescohier acknowledged that he had never given much thought about the sirens being heard inside.
“If it’s summertime, you’re sleeping you’ve got windows shut and air conditioning on it wouldn’t be likely that you would even necessarily hear them,” he said. “At some point down the road, if the city were to enhance the four sirens with ones that are louder, maybe that changes, but I’m also thinking about the Banker Road development. Would the current siren infrastructure accommodate that?”
Rausch said the siren by the water tower on Cloute Hill would cover that area well.
Not concerned about the future Banker Road development, the chief said he did have some concerns for the far southeast portions of the community and the southwest by the new school.
“I think those are both areas that may be a little dead,” he said. “You have to not only take into consideration the distance from the siren but also the topography.”
For example, he said the Jamesway siren is a little bit down in the valley near Endl Boulevard.
“It doesn’t carry out to the east as well as it could I think,” Rausch said.
Homes and more development off Highland Avenue were not present 54 years ago when the sirens were installed. On the other side of town, there was no development along Madison Avenue, particularly the residential portions now located behind Pick ‘n Save.
“There are certainly probably some dead spots,” the chief said. “As you can see from the estimate that we have here, we’re looking at about $25,000 per location and that’s a pretty significant issue with budgets the way they are right now.”
Rausch did recommend that the city replace/upgrade the other remaining sirens with larger models over a period of years.
“There’s an additional proposal that once the new emergency management director is appointed, I would expect we’ll move forward to look at how we can possibly find some other upgrades to the system and potentially study to see where the dead spots are in the community,” Rausch said.
Fort Atkinson Municipal Building, file photo/Chris Spangler.
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