By Nick Cenegy
The Anniston Star
The warning sound of potential disasters will change for residents in parts of northeast Alabama in early 2009.
More than 145,000 homes in six counties will have a limited opportunity to get free emergency alert radios beginning in January, emergency management officials said at a press conference Thursday.
Steve Swafford, executive officer for the Cleburne County EMA, said the new radios are being offered as a conversion from tone radios that were installed in many homes and businesses in preparation for chemical weapons incineration at Anniston Army Depot.
The tone radios are reaching the end of their government-funded lifespan, Swafford said. With the most potent of chemical weapons incinerated, a planned rollback of the tone radios will leave many residents without disaster warning.
Not every residence originally qualified for a tone radio. The new radios, however, will be available to all in Calhoun, Clay, Cleburne, Etowah, St. Clair and Talladega counties, he said.
A committee for the project narrowed the available radio designs down to four possible units. Vendors will submit quotes in the coming months to provide one or more of the units, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency footing the bill, he said.
The new radios, which resemble electronic alarm clocks, receive information directly from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, instead of being routed first through area EMAs and then broadcast, Swafford said.
The alerts begin with a tone — like the tone alert system — then verbal instructions and printed text follow. The text provides a more detailed method of transmitting information, Swafford said. Unlike the tone alert system, the new radios also have a warning light that stays lit until the warning is over, he said.
The initiative is a collaborative effort between the six counties' EMAs and the Fort McClellan Army National Guard Training Center.
The group will be targeting the affected areas in three phases.
Swafford said the agencies plan to mail out application cards to all eligible residents. To sign up for a free radio, residents just have to mail it back.
Those who receive the cards must return them between Jan. 1 and March 31. Shipment of the radios via the postal service is planned between Jan. 1 and the end of April 2009, Swafford said.
The first major residential push is funded by $3.25 million from FEMA. Swafford and the group of local EMAs will report back to FEMA for the remainder of the funding.
"The unknown factor is the participation from the public," Swafford said.
The group hopes to have the radios in at least 85 percent of area homes.
The new radios will serve to notify residents of chemical weapons emergencies, weather-related warnings, amber alerts, terrorist events and a variety of incidents.
The mailers will be the only way to sign up for the program, Swafford said.
Calhoun County Commissioner Robert Downing and a number of other public officials attended Thursday's press conference and luncheon.
Downing said he is pleased with the switchover and said the new radios will be much easier for the public to use. He said he hasn't heard much concern from his constituents yet, but with public safety issues it's "out of sight, out of mind."
"Certainly people deserve to have some kind of notification if there is an accident out there," Downing said.
Destruction at the incinerator, where crews are destroying chemical weapons that have been stored for decades, has been happening uniformly, but that certainly doesn't mean residents and officials shouldn't be vigilant, he said.
"This is a great deal for everyone concerned," Downing said. "In the long run, it could save FEMA millions of dollars, and our citizens will have a strong measure of protection."
