Outdoor Siren tests happening today in Winkler & Morden, residents encouraged to sign up for municipal alert systems

The outdoor emergency sirens in Winkler and Morden will sound today at noon.    

Emergency Municipal Coordinator for Morden, Winkler & the RM of Stanley, Darin Driedger, says the test of Winkler's two outdoor sirens, and the one located at the Morden Fire Hall, will be tested to coincide with Emergency Preparedness Week.
    
With these tests, Driedger, says there's no need to take action, but people need to know, that in the event of a real emergency, if the siren sounds, you should seek shelter. The next step would be to tune into your local radio station to get further instructions.

"So, the purpose of those outdoor warning sirens is, again,  just to alert people who are caught outside, because we know they are in a much more dangerous situation than the folks who are inside."

Meanwhile, Driedger also encourages residents to get signed up with their municipal alerting systems, in addition to the national Alert Ready system.

"The most kind of urgent matters, the very dangerous ones, think of your tornado threat, those sorts of things, people would anticipate to get an Alert Ready notification on their cell phones. So those are geographically targeted to areas that are facing that threat," said Driedger. "But we can also use those municipal systems too, even for a wide range of issues that can be from a utility outage, an issue with the sewer line and water line, those sorts of things too."

Driedger said those kinds of alerts may not be as imminent, but they're also good for residents to know, and he encourages residents to sign up for their respective municipal alert systems.

The Code Red system is used by the City of Morden to alert their residents.

The City of Winkler and the RM of Stanley use the Connect program.