An unexpected $82,000 expense will ultimately leave Tilden with a better emergency warning system.
The Tilden City Council unanimously approved $80,917 for two new sirens and another $1,662 for software Sept. 8 after learning the copper phone lines used to activate the City’s existing sirens will no longer be serviced.
Mayor Tom Nelson said Tilden had little choice but to replace the system, but the upgrade will give the community more powerful sirens, better coverage and a system that can continue operating during a power outage.
“We have been forced to upgrade our siren system, and we’ve been working on it now for about maybe two months, maybe three months when we found out,” Nelson said. “It was really short notice.”
Nelson said Tilden isn’t alone. Communities throughout the area that rely on Frontier’s copper lines are facing the same issue, which the company is calling a “copper deactivation.”
Tilden Fire Chief Mike Krick said the existing sirens operate through dedicated phone lines, meaning the City would eventually have no way to activate them without replacing the system.
“Without them, we would not have any,” Krick said of the replacements. “The phone company is no longer servicing copper lines. So when that goes, that’s how our sirens operate — off of dedicated phone lines. We would have nothing at that point in time, no way to activate them.”
Nelson said the copper lines are expected to be deactivated in November, creating a tight timeline for getting the new system operational.
“They seem to think that they can have it set up before they deactivate the other ones,” Nelson said, “but it’s going to be really close.”
While the expense wasn’t planned, the change will provide Tilden with an upgraded warning system.
The City currently has three sirens but will replace them with two more powerful units. Krick said the siren on the north edge of town will remain in generally the same location. The siren behind the American Legion will be eliminated, while the siren near Merit Mechanical will be relocated farther south, likely near the water tower.
Nelson said the new sirens have a higher decibel range, and placing the southern siren on higher ground should allow the sound to travel farther.
Krick said the new sirens are powerful enough that one could cover the community, but installing two gives Tilden a backup if one fails.
“Actually one is sufficient to cover the town,” Krick said. “We went with two as a backup redundancy in case something were to go down.”
The new system also addresses another concern during severe weather — power outages. Krick said electricity will be supplied to the new sirens, but the units operate from batteries.
“Even if the power goes out, we can still set them off,” he said.
Krick expects the equipment to arrive within the next month or two, although an exact date has not been set. Once it arrives, he said crews should be able to complete installation of both sirens in about a day.
The process began quickly after Krick received notice that the copper lines would no longer be supported.
“We were able to get things put together pretty quick,” Krick said. “Once that happened, the City Council was very good at making sure the community would have emergency sirens.”
