Putnam Awarded FEMA Grant For Emergency Weather Radios

FEMA has awarded Putnam County a grant to allow for the purchase of some 2,500 weather radios.

County Mayor Randy Porter said he will likely organize an event similar to the Emergency Preparedness event held back in September to give the radios away on a first come, first serve basis.

“Getting the message out to our citizens is top priority with me, because we need to get the weather alerts and the emergency alerts out,” Porter said. “But also the information out of what’s going on to let them know what the situation is. So it’s very key and very top priority. We’re just excited that we did get this grant and going to be able to get them out to a lot of the families.”

When the tornado hit in 2020, cell phone towers were destroyed on the storm’s path into Putnam County. Porter said having one of these radios will allow people to get information even without their cell phones.

“A lot of folks didn’t get the tornado warning on their cell phone like they planned that they would, so these weather radios run off electricity, but they also have battery backups,” Porter said. “And when the tornado alerts and severe weather alerts are put out by the National Weather Service, this radio sits on your night stand in your bedroom, it will go off with an alarm when there’s a warning, that way you’re pretty much guaranteed to get the alerts.”

Porter said the county applied for the $62,000 grant back in 2021.

“We had kinda given up on it and wasn’t sure we’d ever hear anything, and then out of the wild blue yonder we were awarded the grant,” Porter said.

Porter said even if you miss the giveaway, he encourages citizens to buy one.

“I know there’s a whole lot more families than 2,500, but when you add these to the 500 we already gave that’s going to be 3,000 we’ve given away,” Porter said. “I know a lot of people have already bought them, but there’s a lot of families out there that haven’t, so we’re going to try to get them in as many homes as we possibly can.”