Residents concerned with weather warnings

Hill County officials say they will work on improving the ways residents are warned about impending weather disasters in light of some problems that surfaced during last weekend’s storms.

County officials spoke at a community meeting held by National Weather Service at Havre City Hall Tuesday night.

Weather Service officials went through a minute-by-minute account of what happened Saturday night and explained their belief that the extensive damage sustained along the Hi-Line was caused by hail and straight winds that reached up to 100 mph — not tornadoes.

They said that three storms converged on the Hi-Line almost simultaneously, adding to the havoc and making it more difficult to make predictions.

People in the audience were more concerned with what they said was the slow reaction from local officials.

“I think we missed the boat,” said Havre resident Dave Brewer.

Brewer said he got alerts on his smartphone from Weather Service, but other forms of notification were not forthcoming. Warning sirens were not activated, he said.

“Why weren’t the sirens activated,” he asked,

“We’ve had all these siren tests,” one woman said. “But when we needed them, they weren’t used.”

Another woman complained that she listened to a local radio station only to hear an hours-old weather forecast and a public service announcement about an upcoming sports camps.

Dave Sheppard, the county’s disaster and emergency services coordinator, said the county is learning from the problems that developed during the storm.

“Should we have activated the sirens,” he asked rhetorically.

“Yes,” came the chorus from the audience.

Sheppard said because of the power outage, electricity was cut off from the county’s two sirens, and only one of the sirens had a battery backup.

Because of the pounding of the hail, he said, it is doubtful people could have heard the siren.

Weather Service provides apps for people to download to their smartphone that ring out warnings to people, letting them know about tornado alerts, but does not warn of severe thunderstorm alerts.

But that should not be a replacement for sirens, one woman said.

“A lot of us older people don’t have these fancy phones,” she said.

But another man warned against overuse of the sirens.

“Pretty soon, we will be crying wolf and people won’t pay any attention,” he said.

Some people questioned whether the Havre Jaycess, organizers of the Havre fireworks display, were warned of the potential problems.

Many people were at the Great Northern Fairgrounds waiting for the fireworks display. Their cars were damaged when the hailstorm broke out, people said.

Mike Rawlins, the chief meteorologist for KRTV, said the station ran banners with warnings in news stories on the screen and interrupted programming several times, but he admitted that helped Havre little because the city had no electricity and couldn’t watch television. He did help communities downwind, he said, because it warned them of what was coming. Updates were sent on Twitter, he said.

Others were concerned about confusion over who had the authority to order activation of the warning sirens.

Sheppard said about 10 people have the authority to sound the sirens, ranging from the sheriff to the police chief to the county commissioners. Sheppard said he, too, had the authority, but he added, “I’m pretty far down the list.”

But Sheppard said the county is looking at Saturday night’s activities as “a learning experience,” and said changes would be made in the county’s plan.

County Commissioner Mark Peterson said county and city officials would begin efforts to improve operations in the future.

He said Sheppard was new on the job and had barely gotten settled when the very unusual weather event happened.

“We’re all going to be talking at the table. We’re going to work something out,” Peterson said.