Fort Saskatchewan’s city-wide siren system is to be dismantled.

The system, first established in the 1980s, was intended to give Fort residents a warning of a major emergency such as a toxic gas release.

But the sirens are no longer effective, and not worth maintaining, City Council agreed last week. Fort Saskatchewan will instead rely on the national and provincial emergency alert system which sends notifications through local cell phones, radio and television stations.

Fort Saskatchewan is one of the last communities to have an outdoor siren system, Deputy Fire Chief Quinn Gillard told Council Tuesday, Feb. 25.

If we do keep the siren system, it will need to be upgraded in order to reach our new neighbourhoods, he added. This will cost at least $89,500, and should really see a full upgrade costing $539,500, he said.

“In the face of newer technologies, the continued use of sirens has been in question for well over a decade and is compounded by the difficulty in determining the overall effectiveness of the system,” Gillard said.

“Technology has evolved,” agreed Councillor Gordon Harris. “I don’t think it serves any purpose.”

Most residents probably don’t even know what to do should they hear the siren, added Councillor Lisa Makin. “I believe that even if it was working 100 per cent, nobody knows what to do. They’d just be standing around.”

Alternatives to the siren system were attempted in the past. An automatic phone-out service was built in 2003 that could phone 1,500 numbers per hour. But this system, though never truly tested, ultimately failed because Fort officials were unable to get a comprehensive list of local phone numbers and addresses.

Similarly, Fort Saskatchewan’s own more recent online Emergency Notification service, established in 2014, struggled to get enough people to sign up for it.

Canada’s emergency alert system, including Alberta Emergency Alerts, is operated by Alert Ready, a private company. The service does not reach some older model phones. Your phone also has to be on in order to receive the alert. To find out if your phone works on this system, go to alertready.ca