The Highland Fire Department resumed testing their tornado sirens in April after a tornado tore through town in March, but whether it had been prior to that storm is doubtful.
After residents complained that they either heard sirens faintly or not at all before and during the March 19 storm, town officials reached out to Lake County E-911 to test them, according to an email the Post-Tribune received as part of an April 30 Access to Public Records request. E-911 representatives discovered two of the sirens didn’t sound an alarm and another didn’t send a signal to the Lake County E-911 system, according to an email to Highland officials from E-911 Executive Director Mark Swiderski.
Swiderski also said in the email that he explained to town representatives that the “siren itself is the responsibility of the communities,” while E-911’s responsibility “ends at the box that activates them.”
“We test the sirens each month on the first Saturday at noon and if any errors so(sic) up on our end we have those investigated,” Swiderski wrote in a March 23 email to Highland Clerk-Treasurer Mark Herak and Lake County Commissioner Mike Repay. “Unfortunately, our equipment does not tell us of(sic) the sirens themselves activate and produce sound that is done by each community with many stationing someone near each to ensure they do in fact activate.”
Regarding Highland, Swiderski said he knew that the late Fire Chief Bill Timmer “was very engaged with so much within” Highland and that many communities either have Police units or EMA/Vest units out on that day to listen and report that the sirens are going off as they should. Timmer died in August of 2023.
“This may just have been one of the things that for lack of a better term fell through the cracks,” Swiderski said in the email.
After Herak forwarded the email to the Town Council and Town Attorney John Reed, Reed instructed in a March 24 email for the council to let him handle any questions about the emergency sirens because he didn’t want “to create an issue between the Town and County at this point.”
“We need much more information, and it will be better to release a full report at the appropriate time,” Reed said in his email.
The Post-Tribune on Tuesday asked Deputy Chief Mike Pipta, new Highland Fire Chief Glenn Schlesser, and Herak whether they agreed with Swiderski’s assessment and if the report Reed suggested is complete. None of the three responded by deadline.
The town did bring in Crown Point-based Duane’s Electric on March 24 to assess the sirens and found that the sirens at the Water plant and Lincoln Street weren’t working; they were able to fix the water plant siren March 26 and ordered the parts for the Lincoln Street siren, according to an invoice from Duane’s. The repairs cost the town $1,735, the invoice said.
Additionally, the town provided the Post-Tribune with siren testing reports from April 5, May 3, and June 7; except for April 5 with the Lincoln Street siren waiting for parts, no further issues were reported.
Four tornadoes ripped through Lake County the evening of March 19: two EF-0 tornadoes and one EF-1 tornado in Gary and one EF-0 tornado that hit in roughly the center of Highland. Some residents reported to the Highland Police Department that they may have heard sirens in the distance, while others didn’t hear them at all, according to a HPD social media post March 21.
Because of that, Highland officials conducted a siren test at noon March 22, where they discovered two of the sirens were “faulty,” a second social media post dated March 22 said. Additionally, they discovered an issue with communication to the Lake County E-911 Center, according to the post.
“The 911 Center is working on that issue and our vendor will be out Monday morning to fix the issue on our end,” the Highland Police Department post said.
The Post-Tribune on April 30 filed via email an Access to Public Records Act request with the town asking for all fire inspection reports of town equipment between August 14, 2023 and April 30; and all written or electronic correspondence among Highland Fire Department members and Town Administrators about said reports during that same time. The dates capture the period immediately after Timmer died to the present.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
