March 8, 2006
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND THE WEATHER
It's 10:15 a.m. here in Indianapolis, and for the last five minutes or so our town's emergency sirens have been pounding out a constant 'air raid' alarm. Typically, when an alarm like this goes off at any time other than 11:00 a.m. on a Friday morning (that's when the alarms are tested here in Indianapolis), it's to signal that we're under a Tornado Warning or Watch or a Severe Thunderstorm Warning or Watch, which I believe is issued for downtown Indy by the Marion County Emergency Management Agency.
One would think though that when an alarm of such magnitude goes on for five minutes without a single drop in decibel, that our local television stations--the same ones that go absolutely nuts every time it snows--would have at least a scrolling warning on their screens, if not a total interruption of regularly schedule programming to explain what all the hubbub is about. But no, that didn't happen this morning, nor has it happened the last three times our air raid siren has been used outside of the normal testing schedule.
As it turns out, today's siren *was* a test. I did some quick snooping around, and according to an official who answered the phone at NOAA's National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office here in Indianapolis, the system was being tested as a part of a statewide tornado drill involving public and private schools.
Is it just me or does anyone else feel that there should be a legal basis for local media to provide instant coverage of why an air raid siren is being sounded? To me, itís simple knowledge management. To assume people wonít go in search of information related to an impending threat is foolish and counter intuitive to why the warning system exists in the first place.
Posted by Mikal at March 8, 2006 10:15 AM
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