ATLANTA — When severe storms hit, most people listen to the weather forecast and wait for the tornado sirens to alert when storms are close.
But are there tornado sirens in downtown Atlanta?
A viewer reached out to our 11Alive VERIFY team after he couldn't find the answer himself.
We started digging and went to the experts.
THE QUESTION
Does downtown Atlanta have tornado sirens?
THE ANSWER
Yes, there are tornado sirens in Atlanta, but they're only intended to alert people walking around on the Georgia Tech and Georgia State campuses.
WHAT WE KNOW
To get the answer to the question, we reached out to all 15 cities in Fulton County, Fulton County EMA, as well as Georgia State University and Georgia Tech.
It turns out 10 of the 15 cities operate their own tornado sirens - Alpharetta, Roswell, Mountain Park, Hapeville, East Point, Sandy Springs, College Park, Palmetto, Fairburn, and Milton.
But the City of Atlanta and Fulton County do not.
That didn't fully answer our question though, since Georgia State and Georgia Tech have campuses downtown.
We discovered both universities have tornado sirens. Each school has seven sirens spread out across its Atlanta campus. Out of those, nine are located in the area officially classified as "downtown."
So, we can VERIFY there are tornado sirens in downtown Atlanta. But, they're only intended to alert people walking around on the Georgia Tech and Georgia State campuses.
There is another alert system if you live in Fulton County, called Falcon, that will send emergency weather alerts straight to your phone.
You can sign up for that HERE.
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