The Little Rock Police Department's Communications Division will be making changes to their emergency weather management procedure after officials confirmed tornado sirens in west Little Rock were 15 minutes late Saturday.
Several Pulaski County residents noticed the tornado sirens went off minutes after a tornado warning was issued by the National Weather Service.
The weather service later confirmed that three tornadoes touched down in the state.
The tornado sirens are run by the Little Rock Police Department's Communications Division, which is under the command of Captain Ty Tyrrell, who said a “perfect storm” of events inside the dispatch center caused a delay.
“A series of human errors led to this,” Tyrell said. “We were extremely busy at the time and it took us much longer then it should. This wasn't a hardware issue.”
The dispatch center receives a phone message from the National Weather Service when a tornado warning is issued, but on Saturday high winds set off a series of 911 and alarm calls that flooded the center, Tyrell said.
“The phone will play the message over the speaker without needing to be answered,” Tyrell said. "The fire ground dispatcher heard the message, but was talking to the fire department at the time and couldn't hear the full call. She would call the National Weather Service back to get the notification and at the same time we started to get some calls from police about a tornado touching down in west Little Rock.”
Tyrell said officers heard of a possible tornado on local television, which sent the dispatch center into a small state of confusion.
“During this moment they thought someone had contacted the supervisor who turns on the alarm system, but nobody did and that caused another delay,” Tyrell said. “We are also not fully staffed on Saturdays and that added another issue to the process.”
Tyrell called the entire incident unacceptable and apologized to Little Rock residents.
“It took far too long and it was my fault,” Tyrell said. “We didn't have a good plan in place and that falls on me.”
The system that dispatch followed on Saturday has been in place for a long time, but Tyrell said he couldn't think of the last time the sirens were delayed as long as they were that weekend.
“It was clearly a failure on our part and we are looking hard at streamlining the steps,” Tyrell said. “The process had too many failure points plus potential for confusion.”
Tyrell, who has been commander of the Communications Division for eight months, has accepted the task of revamping the siren system's activation. He said he will begin re-training people on the notification system and reduce the steps it takes to turn on the sirens.
Read Tuesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.