WEATHER RADIOS BROADCAST EARLY WARNINGS

It was good to learn that the National Weather Service is working to establish a station in Cape Girardeau and increase its coverage in our area. The new weather station joins one opened this month near Garwood, Mo., in rural Reynolds County that will serve Carter and Wayne counties.

After all, Southeast Missouri is prone to every type of unpleasant weather except tidal waves and hurricanes.

And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather station in Dexter, Mo., can't be heard along the Mississippi River in Cape Girardeau and northern Cape Girardeau County, areas considered a dead zone for weather-radio coverage.

The new tower will help close a gap in radio coverage so that all Southeast Missouri residents can receive weather reports on special radios.

The weather radio broadcasts loud beeps to warn of coming tornadoes, thunderstorms or floods.

The radios are remarkable. At Cape Girardeau stores, the basic ones cost around $30, and the top-of-the-line, digital, programmable ones cost about $70. The upper-end radios can be programmed to only go off in case of floods or only in case of an alert for Cape Girardeau County.

In case of an alert, the radios broadcast an alarm for about eight seconds, followed by live information about the danger.

The value is obvious. Too often, we hear news reports of people hurt or even killed because they slept through tornado warnings on television and regular radios. These weather radios can wake endangered residents.

It behooves us Cape Girardeau residents to take care of our own weather safety. City officials have made clear they aren't considering outdoor warning sirens to alert citizens about coming weather systems, although they will apply for grants so that rest homes and other facilities ranked critical by the Federal Emergency Management Agency can have weather radios.

However, considering the coming availability of the weather signal and the serious nature of weather threats in the area, the city should at least consider a program to get weather radios to the elderly and poor who could not afford them otherwise.