Western University has installed a siren on campus in order to warn students and faculty members to take shelter in case of incoming severe weather.
The 680 kg-Whelen omni-directional weather siren, located on the roof of Western’s Alumni Hall building, is designed to notify those on campus and local community members just a few kilometres away of an imminent weather emergency.
Similar systems also exist on the campuses of Hamilton, Ont.’s McMaster University and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
The project reportedly cost Western $100,000, but the university is still looking to upgrade its investment, according to Keith Marnoch, Western’s director of media relations.
Marnoch said the necessity of the siren was brought on by southwestern Ontario’s severe weather patterns. With Western located within “Tornado Alley,” the region between Windsor and London, Ont., the university is vulnerable to plenty of thunderstorms. Marnoch specifically pointed to an August 2011 tornado in Goderich, Ont., located about 100 km north of London.
“In terms of severe thunderstorm activity, we are certainly in an alley of weather that comes up through mid-United States and through Ontario in the warmer months,” he said.
“The reality is that some places don’t have the potential for wind damage or tornado-type activity that we do.”
The siren can be heard 1,066 metres from its location at 70 db. It also has voice capabilities to explain the possible emergency, indicated by the preceding tone of the siren.
The siren, which took about six weeks to install after over a year of planning, will be sound tested between two to four times per year.
The first test took place Sept. 4. The siren could be heard up to six kilometres from campus, Austen said.
But for Jon Rom, a second-year student at Western living just over three kilometres from campus, the siren was nowhere to be heard.
“If the point is to warn me of tornadoes, I feel like a simple email would actually be more useful than a siren,” Rom said, describing Western’s purchase as “extravagant.”
“We didn’t have any real extreme weather in London last year to my knowledge. However, hearing that [McMaster] and Queen’s also have similar systems, I can understand why Western would feel like they’d want to put the money towards it,” he said.
“In a way it’s understandable, but in a way unnecessary.”
“The message of the sirens is ‘severe weather approaching, seek shelter immediately,’” campus community police service director and project initiator Elgin Austen said via email.
“The purpose is to advise persons outside of buildings to seek shelter inside of a building. The safest place during severe weather is inside, not outside,” said Austen, noting that technology is already in place to advise those indoors during a potential storm.
“Other emergency notification processes at Western utilize the university’s technology and network, while the weather warning sirens are activated via two-way radio and don’t depend on the network in case something happens to this.”
