The emergency sirens in Vermont Yankee’s emergency planning zone will be sounded longer than usual (three minutes) during their normal monthly testing in the first week in November in the following order:
On Tuesday, November 2, the town of Hinsdale, N.H., will conduct its extended test at its usual testing time of 6 p.m.
On Wednesday, November 3, the towns of Bernardston, Colrain, Gill, Leyden, and Northfield will conduct the extended siren tests at the usual time of 7 p.m.
On Saturday, November 6 at Noon, the extended sounding will occur in the towns of Brattleboro, Dummerston and Guilford, Vt.
Also on Saturday, November 6, the New Hampshire towns of Chesterfield, Richmond, Swanzey and Winchester will conduct the testing at their usual time of 12:30 p.m.
Later in the month, the town of Vernon, Vt., will test its sirens at 7 p.m., on Thursday, November 18.
The extended three-minute siren sounding test is conducted annually to verify the operability of the 37 sirens in the emergency notification system.
The sirens can generate several types of tones that can be activated by the individual towns for their own purposes. The three-minute test will be a steady tone that varies slightly in volume as the siren rotates. However, several sirens are mounted on buildings and, by design, do not rotate.
As stated in the emergency plan information annually distributed to residents and businesses, the purpose of the steady tone is to direct residents to tune to a local emergency alert system (EAS) radio station such as WTSA 96.7 FM, WHAI 98.3 FM or WKNE 103.7 FM. There are a total of 21 local EAS stations that would relay detailed messages from State public safety agencies about recommended public responses to an emergency.
The pre-test publicity is widespread and includes flyers, radio announcements and newspaper ads which direct residents who have questions on the testing to contact their town’s emergency management director or Mark Gilmore at Vermont Yankee at (802) 258-4168.
# # #