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Have you noticed sirens popping up around Lubbock? The first one I saw was near the corner of 82nd and Indiana. Now they are popping up across Lubbock and if you've been wondering what they are and why they are popping up, you aren't alone.

The sirens are the new tornado sirens the Lubbock City Council voted to approve in February of 2021. According to previous reports, 45 sirens will be going up around the City of Lubbock.

So what has taken so long to get the sirens up? Supply chain issues and manufacturing delayed the project because the company hired the supply the poles had shifted to making PPE during the pandemic. Now the City of Lubbock has the 50 foot poles ready to go up across the city.

The sirens are actually being constructed at the Emergency Operations Center and will be completely up and running by the second quarter of the year according to reports. This seems to be another delay since there were reports in August of 2021 that all 45 sirens would be up and running in January.

The City of Lubbock had originally budgeted $1.1 million dollars for the tornado sirens, but previous reports show the project was awarded to Goddard Enterprises of Oklahoma for $710,415.70.

According to a previous story from KAMC, the City will be able to trigger the sirens remotely.

Logan Shelts, operations manager at Goddard Enterprises, said the city will be utilizing the CommanderOne, a cloud based platform, which will enable the city to trigger the sirens from a mobile app on their phone and a web browser from anywhere in the world. Shelts also said the system is also automatic.

Shelts said the system will be able to interpret information directly from the National Weather Service and send alerts without user interaction required.

“What that means is you don’t have to wait for someone to push the button which can, a lot of times, extend the warning period by a lot,” he said.

Shelts also said the sirens can be heard about a mile away.

You should start seeing more sirens go up around Lubbock.

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