The Delaware County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Staff (EMA) reported Tuesday morning that there were no reports of significant damage as a result of the storm Monday evening.
The EMA reported that the county had two separate tornado warnings just before midnight Monday, adding sirens were sounded several times throughout the county as a result.
Currently, there are 16 outdoor warning sirens scattered throughout the county, with seven of them located within the city of Delaware.
Sandy Mackey, deputy director of the EMA, said Tuesday that most of the sirens in Delaware County are owned and maintained by the jurisdictions in which they are located, and Delaware County EMA owns and maintains four sirens: two at each state park.
She added the outdoor warning sirens are designed to alert anyone outside to the danger of the weather and send them toward shelter. The sirens, she said, are not designed to alert people who are indoors.
“While you may be able to hear a siren inside your home or other structure, they are designed for outdoor use,” Mackey said. “This is one reason Delaware County EMA strongly encourages the use of multiple means of receiving alerts and notifications. You want something that will wake you up in the night, or can be heard over a television. Weather radios, DelCoAlerts (www.delcoalerts.org), and text messages from local television stations are excellent sources of communications.”
Mackey said the DelCoAlerts system sends notifications based on users’ addresses, and only those in affected areas will get notifications.
“The DelCoAlerts system uses polygons,” Mackey explained. “If an address listed in the database is not in the polygon, it will not be alerted. Example being the tornado watch that was issued was for the entire county, so everyone was alerted. The tornado warnings were for specific areas of the county and only addresses in the storm’s path were alerted.”
The EMA also reported that according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the new tornado shelter at Delaware State Park was open and had approximately 95 people taking shelter inside.
The only reported injury was a potential lightning strike, the EMA reported.
