Decatur is spending $120,000 to add two new tornado signs, giving the city a total of six plus one more owned by Agnes Scott College.
One gets installed near the Ebster pool bathhouse and other at the old United Methodist Children's Home property that the city bought in August.
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The four originals are at Glennwood, Westchester, Winnona Park and Oakhurst Elementary Schools. They cost $108,510, funded by a FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant in 2009, the city responsible for providing a 15% ($16,000) grant match.
The sirens are intended to provide an outdoor tornado warning (though many hear them indoors) when there is a tornado warning issued by the National Weather Service, or a tornado's spotted by a public safety employee.
The sirens are tested once a month but have only sounded for real once, on May 4 this year around 9:40 p.m.
The city recommends that upon hearing a tornado siren you go to a pre-designated shelter, or to the lowest floor, or if there’s no shelter lie flat in a nearby ditch or depression.
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