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The annual Kentucky Statewide Tornado Drill is exactly as the name suggests. MetroSafe acts as the emergency communications center for Louisville Metro, handling everything from weather alerts and evacuation orders to warnings about hazardous materials (or people).MetroSafe’s Cody Ashbaugh wants to address the most common misconception: that tornado sirens should be heard indoors.”The number one thing we want people to understand is that sirens are made for outdoor use,” he said. “They are not made to be heard in a basement, through a concrete building.”Instead, the alert system works in tandem with LENSAlert (short for Louisville Emergency Notification System Alert — text “LENSAlert” to 67283 to subscribe to text message notifications) and smartphone notifications to warn the public when necessary.The tests don’t trigger smartphone alerts, but it’s important to ensure the system works as intended, as it can be activated manually or when it detects unusual weather activity that affects one or more of the sirens placed in Louisville Metro or the six nearby counties. “It’s human nature — it’s going to fail at some point,” Ashbaugh said. “We’re going to have that backup in place, no matter what.”He’s referring to MetroSafe’s multiple redundancies—operators can move to other dispatch centers at a moment’s notice, or even access emergency systems remotely (such as from home) thanks to a cloud-based network.MetroSafe is also preparing to test a “Rapid Deployable Siren” that can be placed at events such as Thunder Over Louisville.”We want to make sure that with that amount of people in such a concentrated area that–worst case scenario, in a weather emergency, we’re able to notify everyone,” Ashbaugh said.Thunder’s the perfect test case in a city that is seeing increasing numbers of events—not just Thunder and the Kentucky Derby, but music, beer, and bourbon festivals (and beyond).”When you pack 800,000 people right on the river, you get a lot of things going on at once,” Ashbaugh said. “Some people believe Derby is our busiest day but, in fact, it’s Thunder.”
The annual Kentucky Statewide Tornado Drill is exactly as the name suggests.
MetroSafe acts as the emergency communications center for Louisville Metro, handling everything from weather alerts and evacuation orders to warnings about hazardous materials (or people).
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MetroSafe’s Cody Ashbaugh wants to address the most common misconception: that tornado sirens should be heard indoors.
“The number one thing we want people to understand is that sirens are made for outdoor use,” he said. “They are not made to be heard in a basement, through a concrete building.”
Instead, the alert system works in tandem with LENSAlert (short for Louisville Emergency Notification System Alert — text “LENSAlert” to 67283 to subscribe to text message notifications) and smartphone notifications to warn the public when necessary.
The tests don’t trigger smartphone alerts, but it’s important to ensure the system works as intended, as it can be activated manually or when it detects unusual weather activity that affects one or more of the sirens placed in Louisville Metro or the six nearby counties.
“It’s human nature — it’s going to fail at some point,” Ashbaugh said. “We’re going to have that backup in place, no matter what.”
He’s referring to MetroSafe’s multiple redundancies—operators can move to other dispatch centers at a moment’s notice, or even access emergency systems remotely (such as from home) thanks to a cloud-based network.
MetroSafe is also preparing to test a “Rapid Deployable Siren” that can be placed at events such as Thunder Over Louisville.
“We want to make sure that with that amount of people in such a concentrated area that–worst case scenario, in a weather emergency, we’re able to notify everyone,” Ashbaugh said.
Thunder’s the perfect test case in a city that is seeing increasing numbers of events—not just Thunder and the Kentucky Derby, but music, beer, and bourbon festivals (and beyond).
“When you pack 800,000 people right on the river, you get a lot of things going on at once,” Ashbaugh said. “Some people believe Derby is our busiest day but, in fact, it’s Thunder.”
