WARNINGS BY PAGER

Perry County's emergency management agency and the Perry County Sheriff's Department have come up with an interesting way of letting people know when severe weather is approaching, and it doesn't cost the county a cent.

Perry countians can connect to a severe weather warning system simply by having an electronic pager, a device many people carry with them these days. Such a system is a far different approach than establishing expensive weather warning systems that sound loud sirens at strategic locations in a town. Those systems can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and because of that few towns in the area have them.

A paging system is connected to a computer at the sheriff's department that can page a lot of people at once. Pagers can be leased that are compatible with the countywide warning system, and when a warning is put out everyone on the system gets it.

There is no charge to be added to the system, but people must rent the pagers from private companies.

Warnings by pager are useless unless one carries a pager. The devices can be rented at relatively low monthly prices, somewhere around $6.

For whatever reasons, not everyone can be expected to have a pager, so the system isn't considered one that provides public notification of approaching severe weather throughout the county. But the county isn't spending any money. It merely provides the service to those who want it.

Perry County's warning system isn't the ideal system, but it is sure better than no public warning system at all, other than television and radio, which can go off the air during stormy weather. It is a simple, logical approach to providing a service, and a good one.