Overreacting to a perceived threat

Reading the Wichita Eagle today, this story popped up at me. It was probably the big picture of all the computer monitors that made look at it first, but there was a sentence in the article that caught my eye.

This spring’s stormy weather has ignited a debate among the five Sedgwick County commissioners over whether the system should be upgraded sooner.

“This weather is becoming increasingly violent,” said Commissioner Gwen Welshimer. “It used to be we’d have small areas taken out. But, my gosh, the whole city of Greensburg, Chapman, Kansas State…”

“I think we’re fooling here with something we don’t understand, but let’s prepare for that. We’ve got to get on that now.”

The best statement she made was at the end. We don’t understand what is going on with the weather, but this is a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat. For many years, the possibility existed that a city would be hit by a tornado, and most of the time it didn’t happen. The odds were simply not in favor of it. Strong, large, long-track tornadoes typically occur in the Plains states, where there is a lot of land between cities. Just because they have hit more cities recently doesn’t mean anything has changed, it means that those cities are simply increasingly unlucky. We don’t know that large tornadoes have never hit those areas before because there weren’t many people living there 100, 200 years ago.

This is simply a politician trying to score easy points so that when she is up for reelection she can say “You like those storm sirens? I helped get those installed two years earlier.” The county would be better served by telling people to get weather radios and spending the money helping them to purchase and program them.

This statement in the comments perturbed me a bit as well.

Upgrading the sirens is nice, yes. But if you live in Kansas you live with the Tornado Warnings and the Siren. What really bothers me is how authorities are now using the cop out that the siren is ONLY for people who are outdoors. Thats (sic) crazy talk, when Tornado Warnings come at 3am the Sirens need to be loud enough to wake people so they take heed of the warning.

If the sirens were loud enough to wake everyone in the city at 3AM, the people living near the sirens would be deaf after they went off. How about accepting some personal responsibility and keeping an eye on the weather yourself.