MALDEN, Wash. — The town of Malden now has a new and improved tool to alert the community of an emergency.
This month, the city installed a new emergency siren right next to City Hall. They’ve been testing it this week.
Malden’s new emergency siren is located in the heart of town and the hope is in the event of an emergency, neighbors who are near and far will hear it. The mayor says during tests this week, the siren could be heard from a mile away.
Malden is improving how it prepares for wildfires one step at a time.
When the Babb Road Fire raced toward town four years ago, the city lost power. This prevented the town’s emergency siren from activating.
"They had to go door to door with a horn to alert people," Chandelle Frick, who lives in Malden, said. "And that’s not the way you want to go about evacuating a town.”
The step to improving this system meant installing a battery-powered siren.
“If the power goes out, the batteries are here to drive the speaker and to support the communication from the control panel,” Ed White, who represents Whelen Engineering, said.
Whelen Engineering designs and manufactures warning equipment. White says the company learned Malden’s story and generously upgraded its system.
“It’s very simple, but most of all very reliable," White said.
Last week, White worked with the city to test the siren, which can be activated simply by a couple of keystrokes.
It is a siren that will work independently with battery power is a welcomed step in Malden’s road to recovery.
"Absolutely, this comforts me," Frick said. "Having this state-of-the-art alarm system that Whelen provided for us, it’s just going to be one additional thing to make us more prepared in the event of an emergency.”