By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Kansans have their own way of dealing with severe weather. Some hunker down in a basement, many go outside to look. Dispatchers at Barton County 911 simply spring into action. Communications Director Dena Popp said storms can create chaos, starting with the decision whether or not to sound tornado sirens once the National Weather Services issues a tornado warning.
"We do not sound the sirens without the advice of emergency responders," she said. "They are the ones out in the field. They have training to know what the difference is between a dustnado, a tornado, when the imminent threat is there. Unless law enforcement asks us to sound the sirens, we do not sound the sirens."
On the evening of July 16, first responders did ask dispatchers to sound the sirens in Great Bend. A dispatcher signaled the siren six times but issues with batteries and a generator prevented the siren from working. Those issues have since been addressed, and Popp is confident the system will work no matter where a storm is in Barton County.
"There's a button for each city," she said. "The signal, or alert tone, that goes out to activate those is different for each city. That way we can activate them individually depending on where the storm is. It's eight different buttons, or we have a ninth button that says we can sound them all at one time."
Each city owns its own sirens, which are merely activated from the county's dispatch center. Each Tuesday, just before noon, dispatchers make contact with area law enforcement to determine if the weekly test will be completed. Those same first responders are the eyes and ears for dispatchers during a real storm.
"In the 911 center, we only have one window to look out and that's toward the back of the building in the director's office," Popp said. "The rest of our windows we cannot see out of. There's a protective film to protect the dispatchers because we can't leave our positions in a storm. We rely heavily on our first responders to let us know what's going on in the outside world and what they expect us to do."
Like other first responders, more dispatchers may be called upon in the event of an emergency. Dispatchers have an app called Active Alert that notifies them when a storm warning is issued in Barton County.
"If it looks like it's going to be pretty bad, we just tell everyone to come to the communication center and if we don't need them we'll send them home," said Popp. "That night, we were fortunate. We had multiple people show up and everyone was running amok."