General Discussion

This area is unique because it has so many recreational spots, lots of out of towners who may be unfamiliar with the dangers posed by the river and may be unfamiliar with escape routes. It also has bad cell phone reception.

The best thing is for people to have NOAA weather radios and pay attention to weather alerts on their cell phones. But let's face it, most people are not good at preparedness. And if cell phone coverage is spotty, or if the camp directors don't allow counselors and children to have cell phones (and may not be monitoring the weather themselves), then having redundancies in place might save some lives should this happen again.

Would the sirens help in the event a flood like this were to happen again during the daytime when people were awake and outdoors? Probably. It would give people time to get to high ground.

Would the sirens help in the exact scenario we saw over the 4th of July flooding, where it was the middle of the night, the victims were all indoors and asleep, and might not hear the sirens? Not necessarily, unless you were right on top of a siren. The sirens are designed to be heard outdoors. If you are a mile away from the closest one and indoors AND awake, maybe you still hear it? If you are asleep in the middle of the night... I still worry the outcome would have been the same. But I agree it would probably be good to put them in since this is such a popular area and they could potentially save more people. This was such a horrible "perfect storm" type tragedy. In addition to putting the sirens in, they should create legislation changing camp regulations to require NOAA weather radios and camp directors to monitor them when warnings are issued in the area.