The Marion Township Trustees say all but one of their emergency sirens are offline while their radio receivers are upgraded. The issue was discovered when the Marion Township Fire Department ran tests to make sure the sirens, which provide alerts for severe weather and tornadoes, were working properly.
The FCC required that all Public Safety radio systems be “narrow banded” as of January 1, 2013. The trustees say they were assured that the radio receivers in the emergency sirens would not be affected by the change to narrow band. During the fire department testing, it was learned that the radio receivers are not dependably hearing their activation signals and are thereby unreliable in an emergency.
The trustees were notified of the issue at their regular meeting Tuesday evening.
The receivers could not be upgraded on site and have been removed from all the sirens for repairs. The only exception is the siren located at the Ohio State University Marion.
Sirens impacted include Marion Township Station 2 (at Campbell Road and State Route 95), Marion County Children’s Services on Marion-Waldo Road, and Grandview Estates. While the upgrades are being made, the sirens are not operational.
The trustees do not have an exact date on when the sirens will be operational, but say they hope to have them back in service as soon as possible. They were hoping to get an updated time frame on Wednesday.
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