Denver is making changes after the city erroneously sounded its emergency sirens during a hail storm earlier this month.
Officials will now rely on the National Weather Service to decide when conditions are dangerous enough to trigger the city’s siren systems.
The NWS is already in charge of issuing “wireless emergency alerts” for most weather-related emergencies, which are alerts sent to phones in a specific radius. Sirens won’t be sounded for weather emergencies until the NWS issues one of those alerts first.
The city also said it will issue fewer emergency alerts to warn the public of non-weather emergencies, like an active shooter or other major threat. Instead, the city’s public safety department will prioritize using “reverse emergency notifications,” which include voice calls, texts or emails to residents who have opted into the service. (You can sign up for those online.)
Sirens can be used for non-weather emergencies, but only if city officials sign off.
