Severe weather is on the horizon tonight, but for the next couple of weeks, the City of Galesburg will be without one of its 13 tornado sirens at the ready for alert.
Due to construction of the new Silas Willard Elementary School, the tornado siren located at the school is being moved to Jason Wessels Park near the Hawthorne Center.
That’s according to Emergency Management Coordinator Tom Simkins, who says the siren has already been moved and mounted, but can’t be hooked up until minor electrical work is completed.
Simkins tells WGIL, there are nearby sirens to Silas, but the move could ultimately hinder some coverage.
“There is a siren also at Nielson School, one at Costa,” Simkins says. “There’s 13 sirens in Galesburg, so if the wind’s right, you might hear more than one. I’m guessing there’s going to be some lack of coverage in the northeast part of Galesburg that would have been covered by the siren at Silas.”
Simkins adds that the city chose to move the siren due to the time of year. He says they have a small window to complete the project before the ground freezes.
All 12 sirens are expected to be functioning tonight, though Simkins says the sirens do not trigger 100 percent of the time when bad weather moves through.
The night an EF-2 tornado destroyed homes and buildings in the nearby town of Cameron, one of Galesburg’s sirens malfunctioned.
In an interview following those events, Simkins said “the current system if fairly out of date,” though he’s not too worried about what is in place.
