May 5, 2009 10:55 pm US/Central
False Alarm Siren Has Hugo Community On Edge
HUGO, Minn. (WCCO) ―
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Hugo Mayor Fran Miron said the false alarm is a big concern. He said the county is trying to figure out why the alarm went off, but so far they don't have an answer. (File)
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The mayor of a Minnesota community devastated by a tornado says he's worried about the city's storm warning system.
A year ago this month a tornado with wind gusts as strong as 165 miles per hour ripped through Hugo. It killed a little boy and badly hurt his sister and seven other people.
More than three dozen homes needed to be re-built from the ground up and more than 300 families had some damage to their homes.
"I saw the transformer burst on the power line, that was the first thing I saw. Then I saw everything start to swirl," said Nancy Fisher.
Fisher and her 2-year-old daughter were nearly killed when they drove directly into the tornado. She heard sirens in Hugo that day, but like so many others, she failed to grasp what was coming.
"The tornado lifted us up and took us up into the power lines, and then we dropped on top of the power lines. There was a power line over the top of the truck, there was one about a half a foot behind the cab," said Fisher.
Thankfully, Fisher and her daughter survived with a new-found respect for tornado sirens.
So when Hugo's sirens went off at 1:00 Tuesday morning, she was up right away and then down to the basement. She soon found out it was a mistake. All seven of the city's sirens went off. One of them sounded for 45 minutes before the public works director disconnected it.
Hugo Mayor Fran Miron said the false alarm is a big concern. He said the county is trying to figure out why the alarm went off, but so far they don't have an answer. Miron said many people took to their basements, fearing a repeat of last spring.
Fisher worries that more false alarms could cause people to become complacent like she was last year.
"Everybody just went about their business that day. Pretty much everybody I talked with did the same thing that day. Just nobody pays much attention to the tornado sirens anymore," said Fisher.
Officials aren't sure if the false alarm was a technical or human error. They admit with the false alarm happening so close to the anniversary of the tornado, that the timing was bad.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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