DELAND -- Emergency officials throughout Volusia County will participate in a statewide tornado drill at 10:10 a.m. Wednesday. The drill is conducted by the state Division of Emergency Management with the National Weather Service to test emergency officials’ alert warnings and notifications.
“We always have the threat of severe weather, but it intensifies beginning in February,” said Charlie Craig, Volusia County Emergency Management director. “While tornados are possible in summer thunderstorms, our most violent storms have occurred from February through May.”
Volusia County Emergency Management encourages disaster preparedness year round and recently began offering citizens free severe weather
warning notifications for their phones. The service is being provided by a Federal Emergency Management Agency Hazard Mitigation grant and provides for an unlimited number of countywide severe weather notifications for one year.
The severe weather notification system is an enhancement of the emergency telephone notification system the county uses - CodeRED. The
new system is designed to deliver automatically targeted weather notifications for the immediate threat of severe thunderstorm, flash flood and tornado warnings within moments of being issued by the National Weather Service.
Citizens in Volusia County are encouraged to sign up for the free weather alert notifications by visiting www.Volusia.org/emergency and clicking on the “CodeRED notification system” logo.
For more information about the notifications and other disaster preparedness information, or to sign up for the services via phone, please call Volusia County Emergency Management at (386) 254-1500.