Casey’s Emergency Warning Sirens in Need of Critical Upgrades

Casey City Council Meeting | October 20, 2025

Article Summary: An inspection of Casey’s three emergency warning sirens has revealed that all are operating with outdated or malfunctioning control boards, prompting the city to seek quotes for necessary upgrades. EMA Director David Craig reported issues ranging from a short in one unit to another being too old for modern diagnostic tools.

Emergency Siren System Key Points:

• The south siren has a shorted control board, causing it to make random, unscheduled announcements.

• The north siren’s control board is over 25 years old, leading to reception issues.

• The central siren’s system is incompatible with the county’s two-tone paging system, preventing it from activating properly.

Casey’s emergency warning siren system is in urgent need of a technological overhaul, the City Council learned on Monday, October 20, 2025.

Emergency Management Agency (EMA) Director David Craig reported that a recent top-to-bottom inspection of the city’s three sirens found significant issues with the control boards in each unit. The sirens themselves are mechanically sound, but their electronic “brains” are failing.

The south siren, which Craig said “talks whenever it wants to,” has a short in its outdated control board, making it unreliable and causing it to be turned off when there is no severe weather threat. The board in the north siren is more than 25 years old, so antiquated that modern computers cannot interface with it, and it suffers from poor signal reception.

Meanwhile, the central siren located at the old fire hall is unable to properly receive activation signals from the county due to an incompatibility between its hardware and the county’s paging tones.

“They’re like a computer. They just need a new brain for the siren. Sirens are fine,” Craig explained to the council. He is currently gathering quotes for replacing the control boards in all three units to ensure the system is reliable, particularly ahead of the spring storm season.