Emergency management agencies encourage safety during severe weather

Severe weather can strike at anytime and anywhere

CLAY AND WEBSTER COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI)- Severe weather can strike at anytime and anywhere. A message that local emergency management officials continue to stress is to be weather aware. Getting the word out to their communities is sometimes their biggest struggle.

Whether it’s ice, flooding, or tornados; severe weather is a danger, no matter what season it is. When it does hit; local emergency management agencies have to let people know in a hurry.

Social media is the primary way of getting word out about severe weather in Clay County; however E.M.A director Torrey Williams said they have 2 other ways of getting alerts out to the community.

“We try to get word out by word of mouth we do encourage people to sign up for code red because we are a code red county to get those weather alerts when we have either a thunderstorm warning, flash flood warning or tornado warning,” said Williams.

Williams said that staying tuned to meteorologists and having a weather radio are also reliable layers of protection. Officials in Webster County also uses code red and their social media streams to alert residents.

“We have tornado sirens that we activate during severe weather we do social media pages our fire departments and with Webster County emergency management,” said deputy E.M.A director for Webster County, Tom Booth.

Booth and Williams agree that it’s important to have multiple ways of keeping up with the weather.

“You could have cell towers that get blown down by severe weather, we could have destruction or malfunction with the outdoor warning systems so it’s always good to have multiple means of receiving weather information,” said Booth.

“You just always have to be prepared so you just about have to prepare for all weather instead of just a single event because you just never know from week to week,” said Williams.

Officials encourage families to know where their safe place is and to review their safety plans on a regular basis.