Champaign County’s 28 weather warning sirens will go silent at the end of the year.

In the meantime, Craig Evans, Emergency Management Agency director for the county, said confusion over the new phone-based warning system may be preventing some residents from signing up for alerts in case of an emergency. The county’s weather warning sirens, which passed their life expectancy at least five years ago, will be decommissioned at midnight on Dec. 31 this year.

The replacement is a Code Red phone alert system, in which residents would receive a phone call on their home or cell phones in case of severe weather. So far, however, only about 3,000 residents in the county have signed up for the alerts. A possible reason, Evans said, is there may be some confusion over a similar, but separate Code Red alert which sends recorded community notification messages in cases such as a missing child or a bio-terrorism alert.

Similar to the difference between Microsoft Word and Excel, the two Code Red programs each serve a different purpose even though they’re offered by the same company, Evans said.

Many residents believe that because they signed up for the initial Code Red program that sends recorded messages from the county 911 emergency dispatch center, they will also receive the weather alerts, which are automatically launched when the National Weather Service issues a severe weather warning. That is not the case, however.

Residents can sign up for both systems on several county web sites. So far, about 15,000 residents have signed up for the community notification system, but only 3,000 have signed up for the severe weather warnings.

Champaign County’s weather sirens will be shut down for a number of reasons, Evans said. The sirens can only be heard if residents are outside. There were at least two cases last year in which the National Weather Service issued tornado warnings after midnight, while most residents were asleep. The new phone-based system would still reach residents at all hours as long as they are near their phone.

“This was one of the things we we thought would actually fix that,” Evans said.

Another problem, Evans said, was the sirens were heard countywide, even in parts of the county where there was no emergency. After 30 years, residents have begun to ignore the warnings in many cases.

“The vast majority of the population actually shrugged it off,” Evans said of the sirens.

After several discussions, county officials also did not believe it made sense to spend the roughly $500,000 it would have cost to replace the sirens, Evans said.

Other municipalities, including Springfield, have also stopped using sirens because of cost and questions about their effectiveness.

While Champaign County is decommissioning their sirens, several townships and villages in Clark County are actually adding more.

“We’re ramping ours up,” said Lisa D’Allessandris, EMA director for Clark County.

Clark County is using a $65,900 Emergency Management Performance Grant to install one new siren each in German Twp. and South Charleston, as well as four in Mad River Twp. near Enon. The grant will pay 50 percent of the cost to purchase and install the sirens while the remaining 50 percent will be split between the communities where the sirens are being installed.

Clark County also uses a Hyper-Reach notification system similar to Champaign County’s Code Red weather alerts.

Combined, the sirens and phone alerts will serve as an extra layer of warning for residents, D’Allessandris said.

“There’s so much technology out there that all of these are just various tools in the comprehensive toolbox,” she said.

The federal grant will allow Mad River Twp. and Enon to install the sirens at a fraction of the original cost, said Kathy Estep, a trustee for the township. While they’re not perfect, they will provide an additional warning for farmers and others who may be outside and way from their phones.

“It’s just another tool to notify people and keep people safe,” Estep said.