Emergency warning sirens that have been silent in four parts of North Little Rock since fall are set to be replaced by the spring tornado season, beginning an upgrade for all of the city’s 16 sirens, city officials said this week.
The North Little Rock City Council will be asked at its 6 p.m. Monday meeting to approve a $125,000 agreement with SafetyCom Inc. of North Little Rock for the initial purchase of four sirens, according to a resolution on the City Council’s agenda.
The sirens are priced at $30,275 each, plus $600 each for shipping, for a total of $123,500, plus taxes.
The $125,000 figure is the amount already in the city’s 2016 general-fund budget that the City Council approved in December. An additional four sirens will be added annually until all 16 are replaced, contingent on available funds, according to the resolution.
“We know spring is coming up on us, and storm season,” said Rick Ezell, North Little Rock’s emergency operations coordinator, who is retiring March 15. “We want to get those in and get ready.”
Tornadoes most often occur in Arkansas during the spring and fall, according to National Weather Service statistics. The order process for the sirens could take five to seven weeks, Ezell said, then “a few days” to install.
“All of our sirens are aging,” said Danny Bradley, the city’s chief of staff. “We have the four that are nonoperational. Those are the four to be replaced immediately. We haven’t had an occurrence where we had to use them, fortunately. We want to try to get those in place before the storm season gets here.”
The four to be replaced first are at the Central Fire Station at Seventh and Maple streets, Fire Station No. 2 at 3700 E. Broadway, Fire Station No. 4 at 8723 Maumelle Blvd., and Fire Station No. 9 at 2309 Osage St., Ezell said.
Testing of all emergency sirens happens every Wednesday at noon throughout Pulaski County.
“We started noticing last fall in the Wednesday tests that they had started giving us trouble,” Ezell said.
The siren at the Central Fire Station is completely off its pole, Ezell said, while two of the others stopped being able to rotate. The one on Osage “wouldn’t shut off,” he said.
Most of the sirens are from the 1970s or 1960s, dating to the civil-defense era, he said.
“They’ve served their time,” Ezell said. “They’ve been good, but they just wore out, and parts availability is getting very difficult.”
SafetyCom was the second highest of five bidders for the project, but it was the only bidder to meet the city’s specifications, according to documents attached to the resolution. Three of the bidders were from out of state.
The company has parts for the system in stock, its sirens are compatible with North Little Rock’s radio system and, because it is local, it can provide on-site service to a siren within three hours or less, according to information provided to the City Council. The company already provides Little Rock’s emergency sirens.
“What we always do is look at the best value to the city,” said Leonard Montgomery, North Little Rock’s emergency management/911 director, who will replace Ezell. “The lowest bidder would have required us to box up and send a siren back to Boston [for repair], and they’re like 1,000-some pounds apiece. The next one was out of Oklahoma City, and it would take them hours to get a serviceman here. The third one also would have to send a siren back to Boston.”
“[SafetyCom] has parts inhouse,” he said. “If we have to call them for something, they can be here in an hour to service, to come and fix them in place.”
The contract says the city intends to buy four more sirens annually over four years, including freight charges, as the city budget allows. If done, the city will have paid $484,400 by the end of the agreement, according to the City Council documents.
The city could have purchased all at once or bought six or 12 more in the next one to two years for slightly less, but the city wasn’t able to spend the added cost to buy that many in bulk, Montgomery said.
“We have four that are out of service, and the city opted to replace those this year,” Montgomery said. “We can replace as many as possible next year, if the money is available. It was not low enough of a difference in cost to get them all at one time. We need four right now.”
The new system will include a diagnostic component that allows the sirens to be checked remotely instead of having to turn them on, and it will have the ability for vocal announcements in case of the need for an area to evacuate or for a general emergency, Ezell said. The system will be electronic instead of mechanical, he said.
“That means when an electronic component goes out, that component can be replaced rather easily and keep on going,” Ezell said. “Repairs on what we have now have been very difficult because of the lack of availability of parts.”