Severe weather conditions on Aug. 8 culminated in four confirmed tornadoes in the area, including one that touched down in the city of Grand Forks.
In the days since, Kari Goelz said her department has heard from concerned north-end residents who said they couldn't hear the outdoor sirens, even though they were awake in the early morning hours when weather conditions were at their worst.
"We haven't had an emergency in quite some time, so I think people forget that those warning sirens are meant to warn people outside on the Greenway, mowing their lawn, taking a walk, whatever," Goelz said. "They're simply indicative of: please go inside and turn on the TV, or the radio or whatever and find out why the sirens are sounding."
She encourages residents to do a few different things to effectively receive emergency notifications. First, they can sign up for CodeRED on the city's website, which issues alerts put out by the National Weather Service, such as warnings for floods, tornadoes and thunderstorms.
"Those tones will wake the dead," Goelz said.
Secondly, residents can make sure their cell phones have emergency alerts enabled in their notification settings. These alerts come from dispatch centers, and include severe weather alerts as well as missing persons and other non-weather related emergencies.
A third resource is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather radio.
Goelz said she believes the network of outdoor sirens in the city is pretty dense, with likely less than a dozen but more than half a dozen, and they are programmed to be loud. However, there are multiple reasons they could be difficult to hear at times, including rain, trains, wind and the fact that the sirens rotate.
She also said it doesn't surprise her that the concerns came from north-end residents, because that area of town is a bit more densely populated than others.
"There are a lot of options other than sirens that you can do indoors, and you will be able to receive no matter what the wind and the rain and the trains are doing," Goelz said.
She didn't hear any concerns about not being able to hear the sirens from people who were outside at the time, though it's likely few people were, because the most severe weather didn't come through the city until after 4 a.m.
There was an instance several years ago where an additional siren needed to be installed, though, due to an inability to hear — but it was not in Grand Forks. Arvilla residents couldn't hear the sirens that were sounding in nearby Larimore and Grand Forks due to the high winds, Goelz said.
"We ended up having to put another one in, because you have so much field work, why not?" she said. "And there's oftentimes many people outside when storms come through."
© 2025 the Grand Forks Herald (Grand Forks, N.D.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
