Brighton Township Approves Maintenance for Emergency Sirens

The Township Board of Trustees unanimously approved an emergency alert system maintenance contract for $3,400 with West Shore Services, the sole distributor and maintenance company of federal sirens in the area, which is based in Allendale.

The agreement is a long-term contract that renews annually. The township has the ability to cancel the contract, but must give 30 days notice of it's annual renewal.

Brighton Township has spent the last two years upgrading all eight of its emergency sirens in order to become narrowband compliant. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is requiring all public safety, industrial and business licensees using 25 kilohertz radio systems to switch to 12.5 kilohertz systems by 2013 in order to promote greater efficiency.

The contract includes visual inspections, testing, adjusting and battery replacement every four years as part of preventative maintenance on the sirens, which are used to warn residents of tornadoes, among other things.

During the discussion, Trustee John Rogers brought up the concerns that some residents voiced about Brighton Township emergency sirens not being used during the March 15 storm that created the tornado that struck Dexter.

Brighton Area Fire Chief Mike O'Brian addressed board members, saying that the stations weren't staffed at the time of the warning and that by the time staff got in, the warning had changed to southeast Livingston County.

"We had our weather spotters out at our southern border, because Brighton and Genoa Township are more middle than they are south, and we had blue skies up at Dorr Road, we had blue skies out here - it was really to the south," O'Brian said. "So our staff made a determination that the storm and the storm path really wasn't hitting Brighton Township, so at the point we did not activate the sirens."

O'Brian said he spoke with representatives from the National Weather Service in White Lake and the warning was actually very specific to areas like Putnam Township.

"Our approach is not to determine from the far side whether a storm is capable of producing a tornado," O'Brian said. "We just want to know if a storm is going to hit our response district, specifically the areas we cover. We don't want to be known as crying wolf. We want to give people advanced warning, we want them to get out of harms way and to shelter as fast as they can. Our hope is we don't ever have to use them for anything substantial, but we can't predict that. So we want to make sure when people hear the sirens, it's either Saturday when we're testing them or it's time for action."

O'Brian said none of the sirens in Livingston County were activated that day.

Brighton Township Treasurer Lana Theis said she agreed about not crying wolf.

The eight sirens in Brighton Township are located in Woodland Trailer Park; Walsh Drive, south of Spencer Road; Buno Road; Pleasant Valley Road, north of Larkins; behind Taylor Farms School; on Mc Clemens at the Livingston Conservation Club; Hilton Road, in the church parking lot east of Hunter and on Old US-23 at Birch Run.