Forget Tornado Sirens, Just Get Lubbock Alert

It's that time of the year when everyone starts talking about tornado sirens, because, uh, we still like 1950's technology around here or something.

I have long said that the sirens were dumb and out of date that the way to go is to alert people on their phones. Lubbock Alert is no doubt the way to go.  Everyone has a phone these days. The homeless guys on the corner can be seen checking their messages. Most importantly, we've already seen how effective this method is with Amber Alerts.

So what about the people without phones? I can only counter with, I'm sure someone next to them will have one. It's impossible for us to cover everyone. Even with sirens, there are people who will have their t.v.s too loud, or live too far away, or who have even gotten so used to hearing them during tests that they ignore them.

It gets better than that too. You can just do severe weather if you want, but you can also opt in or out of traffic, health, utility and other notifications. I want to say that the signup would be better and might cover folks better with a lightweight app, but I do like what I saw and the other options I was able to get by signing up online.

The way to make this work and save us taxpayers from a dumb project like tornado sirens is for everyone to sign up for the LBKalert.