STOCKTON, Md. - Worcester County is moving forward with a more than $1.4 million upgrade to its outdoor emergency warning siren system, a project local fire officials say is especially important in the county’s rural communities.
The Worcester County Commissioners approved funding to upgrade 19 outdoor warning sirens across the county. The project is being funded through surplus money and is intended to modernize a system that fire officials say still plays a role in emergency response, even as cell phone alerts and other technology have become more common.
In Stockton, Fire Chief Tim Jerscheid said the siren outside the firehouse has been out of service for about three years because of an electrical issue. He said the county had previously indicated it would take over the siren system, and he is hopeful the newly approved funding will help get Stockton’s siren and others across the county working properly again.
“Our siren’s been out of service for about three years now. It’s an electrical issue,” Jerscheid said.
Jerscheid said outdoor sirens remain important in rural areas, where volunteer firefighters may be working outside, in fields, or away from their phones when a call comes in. He said the sirens also provide another layer of alerting when internet, radio or phone-based systems fail.
“When the internet goes down or the radio system goes down, we don’t have those capabilities no more,” Jerscheid said. “So the siren system, we still have that as a backup.”
Jerscheid said the sirens can also alert the broader community that emergency vehicles may soon be responding through town. In Stockton, he said that matters because the firehouse sits near a busy intersection that serves as a crossroads for the southern end of Worcester County and parts of nearby Accomack County.
Commissioner Eric Fiori said the purpose of the upgrade is redundancy. He said while many people now rely on phones for emergency alerts, sirens provide another way to notify both the public and emergency personnel that something serious is happening.
“It’s all about redundancy,” Fiori said. “This is a system we’ve been using for years, and although everyone has their convenience of their cell phones and other items in their pocket, if they do not have their pocket, it just alerts the neighborhood that there is a major incident occurring.”
Fiori said public safety is a priority when deciding how to use surplus money.
“If we have supplemental funds that can make our neighborhood safer, I’m all about putting that into the neighborhood and making it a safer place,” Fiori said.
Jerscheid said he appreciates the county’s effort to fund the work and said the sirens remain “a very, very integral part” of the emergency response system in southern Worcester County.
