JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (WDRB) -- Two months after a tornado tore through Clark County, one neighborhood remains a sea of blue tarps and boarded-up windows. But one of the scariest parts of the fallout from the storm is that many residents said they didn't near any sirens.
Jackson Dearing was there the night of April 2, at his grandparents' house with his cousins when the tornado roared through the backyard on Brookhollow Way near Interstate 265.
"All I heard was my grandparents screaming, telling us to get in the basement," Dearing said Wednesday. "I looked outside and saw the damage, I got scared,"
Dearing's grandmother and many other neighbors didn't hear a thing besides the loud winds from the storm.
Clark County Emergency Management Director Gavan Hebner said the siren near those homes was in the path of the tornado. Since the winds from the storm were louder than the sirens, he said, residents didn't hear the warning.
But rapid population growth in the area has led to a shortage of sirens in Clark County. Wendy Dant Chesser, president of One Southern Indiana, said last year that Clark County's population grew by almost 10% from 2010-20, a trend that hasn't slowed.
"From the point we are standing at (near 10th Street and Interstate 265), we could probably count to close to 1,000 new housing units either under construction or being planned in a 5-mile radius of this area," Dant Chesser said last summer.
To fix that dangerous problem, the county is going to install six new sirens: in Starlight, Memphis, Utica, eastern Jeffersonville and two in Sellersburg. And the county is waiting for approval for a seventh siren in River Ridge.
"We had a gap in outdoor alerting systems," Hebner said of the April 2 storm. "This is filling in the gap from the growth we've experienced."
The sirens cost $40,000 each, and half of the money is coming from the towns they'll be built in. The rest is federal COVID-19 relief money from Clark County.
"The price tag is expensive, but you can't put a price on someone's life," Hebner said.
The sirens are scheduled to be installed by the fall. Hebner hopes they'll could be the sound that saves a life.
"I feel like it's a great idea so everyone's in safety," Dearing said.
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