Are you signed up for multiple emergency alerts? Experts say having than one could save your life
From less than 15 seconds to a couple of minutes, that's how long it can take for an alert to be dispatched to warn people of danger like a tornado.
Emergency experts in Michigan said the key is the more platforms you can hear or see, the better.
"Siren coverage is very variable from county to county. We'll see some that have the entire county plastered. Oakland County has several hundred, as I last checked, but other counties have none," said Rob Dale, the deputy emergency manager for Ingham County.
Dale said that how many emergency sirens a community has comes down to cost, upkeep and how many locals see the need for them.
"It's hard to deal with life safety when it comes to cost. But that has to be done at some point. Is it worth it? Given the number of tornadoes that we get? The number of deaths we get looking historically, does it make sense to add that as a new layer?" Dale said.
Outdoor emergency alert sirens aren't the only way to get an alert. You can get them straight to your phone, through an app, on the radio or on the TV. Dale said the idea is to have multiple layers of alerts.
"Sometimes the app may fail, the cell tower may go down. We have NOAA weather radio, same concept. It's fairly good. It has battery backup, but still can fail. We have, of course, local TV media outlets, but sometimes you can't get that in if something, if the network is down, so really this is just yet another layer. We don't suggest anyone relies on any one layer," said Dale.
He said an alert went out just minutes before the deadly tornado in Union City last week, but storms can be unpredictable, and what kind of shelter you have access to really matters too.
"This was a quick-developing storm system. So if you were in a manufactured home and you had five minutes of warning, that doesn't do you a lot of good. You don't have a shelter nearby. On the other hand, if you're in a home, a lot of times that five minutes is ample enough to get down into your basement or into your safe space," said Dale.
Dale said if a tornado alert sounds, you should get to a basement or stairwell in your home, and it can be helpful too to have bike helmets in your emergency kit to protect from falling debris.
