ST. JAMES PARISH, La. — During this week's severe weather event residents in St. Charles Parish said they heard the warning sirens go off just after midnight on Tuesday. In St James Parish residents say they had to rely on text message alerts.
Monday evening the storm rolled through and St. James Parish was hit with severe weather. A St. James Parish resident told WWL Louisiana when the storm hit she had to rely on the national weather service and text message alerts from the sheriff's office.
WWL Louisiana reporter Eleanor Tabone asked the resident, "Would you prefer to hear a siren." The resident said she would, to which Eleanor asked why. The resident responded with, "It makes us more alert of what's going on around us."
St. James Parish does have warning sirens there's one here in front of the parish courthouse. The Parish President says they weren't activated yesterday as they aren't as effective as a text message alert which comes straight to your phone.
"We do not actively have an official tornado siren," said St James Parish President Pete Dufresne.
He went on to say, "What we have is called RAVE, it's a text message warning alert system residents can subscribe today."
Parish President Dufresne says the text alerts come straight from the National Weather Service. He says The sirens were Initially installed by the surrounding plants to notify residents of hazardous threats, but Hurricane Ida took out a lot of those sirens.
He said, "We're making a decision now whether we are going to rejuvenate that current system as it stands or make some upgrades and improvements to it which will be a very costly endeavor."
The President says the old sirens only have four alerts; one says "test", one says "weather alert", one says "shelter in place", then another says "all clear". He says text messages can deliver more in-depth and up-to-date alerts.
The St. Charles Parish Emergency Operations Center activated its tornado sirens around 12:45 a.m. Tuesday.
According to the Parish the warning sirens are "owned and maintained by Entergy and are placed in such a way that all citizens within 10 miles of the nuclear power facility can be alerted."
The Parish says the sirens are used to alert people of tornados and evacuations, and that they're not designed to tell you what exactly is happening, only that something is wrong and you should seek more information.
Darryl Bourgeois, a St Charles Parish resident told WWL Louisiana, the sirens, "Save people's lives if they hear the sirens going off."
He went on to describe the siren he heard during severe weather, saying, "It was a loud noise, like louder than a train horn, I know everybody should have heard that has decent ears to hear."
He says he's thankful for the sirens, saying, "Everybody can be warned, that there is a tornado watch in effect."
To subscribe to the St James Parish text alert system visit the Parish website here.