Neighbors in Heath said their tornado sirens went off after tornado warnings were already sent to their phones or on TV. Some said they never even heard them.
One neighbor, Timothy Leslie, said he got alerts on his phone but said he's shocked the sirens didn't go off right away.
"There were tornado warnings in Licking County and the west side of licking county this is the east side so it's moving towards us so we should've had a tornado siren sound," Leslie said.
At the new emergency management center in the Port Authority on Irving Wick Drive West, director Sean Grady said their center got a lot of calls. Grady said there was confusion from neighbors on why the sirens didn't go off immediately and also why some couldn't hear them.
In Licking County, he said there are 57 sirens in 26 townships and 10 municipalities.
He said last night's siren issues were a combination of timing, human error, and other variables. Grady explained that sometimes the alerts sent to the sirens aren't triggered because the warnings posted by national weather are not up for very long.
"Once a tornado warning comes into the county when you're in automatic mode, it automatically triggers and they send out codes to the impacted sirens," Grady said.
He said that is what happened last night. The warnings were not on the screen long, which did not trigger the alerts that were supposed to be sent to the sirens.
"When our 911 dispatcher made the phone call to one of the supervisors to verify when the supervisor looked at the screen the first two warnings were already gone and the third one wasn't posted yet," Grady said.
That's when the center got the calls from neighbors letting them know the sirens weren't going off and the tornado warning alerts were already out there. When an automatic trigger fails, emergency management will go in fail safe mode which means they set sirens off countywide. Grady said many variables can go into sirens not working properly and not being heard.
"It's impacted by the weather conditions, it's impacted by thunder, lightning, tree coverage, how far away you are once you get inside your house, once inside, fans running, ACs running," Grady said.
Grady wants to remind people the sirens are solely to be heard from outside. If inside, he said it is best to get alerts from watching TV or checking a phone.