As at least five tornadoes swept through the greater Austin area late Monday afternoon, Central Texans took to social media to complain of yet another lag in regional infrastructure: Few storm sirens stood ready to warn residents of incoming disaster. Only a handful of sirens are located in Travis County, mostly on University of Texas property near Downtown Austin. In Williamson County, Georgetown has sirens installed at regular distances covering the Downtown area and north toward the municipal airport, but more rural areas of the county like Granger, where a tornado touched down and damage from the storm was more severe, lack that infrastructure.
Although news reports from the previous weekend began to suggest the possibility of tornadoes on Monday, the warning issued shortly after 2pm Monday caught many people by surprise. As extreme weather events in the region seem to become more common, Central Texans said they’d like to see a better notification system. But storm sirens can cost upward of $30,000, not including annual maintenance fees, and can generally be heard only within a radius of between 1 and 2 miles. Stacey Osborne, the communications manager for Taylor, 10 miles south of the tornado’s path, said storm sirens aren’t as necessary anymore because of the near ubiquity of cellphones. Emergency alert text services are offered by the offices of emergency management in both Travis and Williamson counties, by the National Weather Service, and by some municipalities including Taylor. But those solutions aren’t 100% effective either; users have to ensure they’re registered to receive the alerts. During the storm on Monday afternoon, some homeowners within a mile of where tornadoes struck complained that they didn’t receive text message alerts.
What’s more, tornadoes are a rare occurrence in Central Texas. The tornado warning Monday afternoon was the first to be issued in Austin in a decade. But tornadoes have struck Central Texas with vicious force in the past. In 1997, a tornado outbreak with striking similarities to the one that happened Monday passed over the I-35 corridor; one touchdown that hit Jarrell, north of Georgetown, killed 27 people and injured dozens more. The disaster prompted several municipalities in the surrounding area, including nearby Hutto, to discuss installing sirens. Since that tornado hit in the late Nineties, the population of the Austin suburbs where tornadoes hit has boomed. Since 2010, the population of Williamson County, on the outskirts of Austin, has expanded nearly 8%, making it the fastest-growing county in the country in that period.
No fatalities have been reported due to storms that hit on Monday, but at least three people were injured in Elgin and one person was taken to a hospital in Austin. At a press conference Monday evening, Gov. Greg Abbott said it “may be a miracle” there was no loss of life.
This article appears in March 25 • 2022.