Iowa State and the city of Ames are spending about $150,000 each to replace the city’s storm warning system with the Citywide Mass Emergency Communications System.

The system will include five voice-capable sirens on the ISU campus, which should allow police to broadcast emergency information more easily.

“The impetus was the tornado that touched down very close to a football game two years ago,” said Douglas Houghton, support services manager for Ames Police. “The process of getting information about the storm to people was limited.”

The CMECS is part of a broader campus security plan that includes the recently implemented ISU Alert.

“Last year, the university started a security plan for campus, and both the ISU Alert system and this system were in that plan,” said Dave Miller, director of facilities operations for Iowa State.

The system is designed to help replace the existing storm warning system in Ames, which currently uses sirens from as far back as the 1970s. In addition to the five voice-capable sirens on campus, CMECS will include 10 new sirens for the city.

“We used to buy sirens from year to year and try to update the system piecemeal, but we figured that would have taken about 10 years,” Houghton said.

The university and city have collaborated on the project because of the unique arrangement of Story County communications. Ames and ISU Police dispatchers work closely with each other, and the CMECS would enable either group to trigger the other’s alarm system.

“It’s a redundancy system, in case something goes wrong,” Houghton said.

The systems will cost the university and the city about $150,000 apiece. Iowa State has already purchased its sirens, and the city plans to follow suit in the near future.

“We expect the sirens to be delivered some time in June, and testing should be in early July,” Miller said.

In terms of usage, the systems could go much further than warning about weather events.

“Let’s say there was a train carrying chemicals coming through town, and there was a derailment,” Miller said. “We could warn people of a chemical spill. We can think of many events you could use these sirens for.”

Each siren is expected to cover a radius of approximately one-and-a-half miles, which would ensure near-total coverage for the university and city. This is a crucial element of the project, considering the goal of the system is to reach people at outdoor events, such as football games.

“This system, together with the telephone-based mass-notification ISU Alert, will help us to reach more people in case of an emergency,” Houghton said.