Chesterton Town Council Member Jim Ton, R-1st, wants the Town of Chesterton to have the ability to activate its own tornado sirens, independent of the 911 Dispatch Center and the Porter County Emergency Management Agency (PCEMA).

At the council’s meeting Monday night, Ton asked Fire Chief Mike Orlich and Police Chief George Nelson to pursue the issue.

Orlich said in response that he has already broached the matter of independent siren activation with PCEMA Director Phil Griffith and that Griffith is investigating the feasibility. But Orlich promised to discuss the issue with Nelson in more detail.

Ton--who noted that at least two jurisdictions in Porter County have independent activation capability--said that it was only by lucky chance no one was killed or seriously injured on Aug. 19, when three separate attempts by 911 dispatchers to activate the tornado sirens failed. The PCEMA also can activate the county’s tornado sirens but at the time its emergency operation center at a different location was not being manned.

“That was too close,” Ton said. “Those things need to work. We could have lost some lives.”

Griffith has since determined that a 23-year-old malfunctioning control panel at the 911 Dispatch Center was responsible for the activation failure.

On three occasions within the span of 14 minutes on Aug. 19 911 dispatchers attempted to activate the sirens: at 7:32 p.m., after the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning at 7:30 p.m.; at 7:38 p.m., after the Chesterton Fire Department notified dispatchers of heavy rotation east of Chesterton; and at 7:46 p.m., after the CFD advised dispatchers that the sirens were not sounding. As near as anyone can tell, by 7:46 p.m. the tornado had already been dead for a minute, after passing through the Beverly Shores area on it northeasterly track.

In other tornado-related business, members voted 4-0 to release $25,000 in Rainy Day Fund moneys to supplement the $37,000 or so remaining in the CEDIT Emergency Fund for ongoing cleanup costs. Member Jeff Trout, R-2nd, was not in attendance.

Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg told the council that the cleanup is going well and that he’s currently obtaining quotes for the chipping of tree debris--being staged in huge mounds at the extreme west end of Dogwood Park--but that he does expect the total cost of the cleanup operation, when all is said and done, to be around $45,000, a tad higher than his first estimate of $35,000 to $40,000. “We haven’t got all the figures in yet,” he said.

Meanwhile, Town Engineer Mark O’Dell told the council that he and Schnadenberg have discussed the cleanup of the debris-clogged Coffee Creek with four contractors, who will submit bids for the work to the Stormwater Management Board at its next meeting, 6:15 p.m. Monday, Sept. 21. The board has agreed to make available for the cleanup around $16,000 in stormwater bond proceeds remaining from an issue in 2000.

O’Dell then raised the possibility of using some of Schnadenberg’s Rainy Day Fund moneys--those not spent on chipping--to supplement the $16,000 in bond proceeds, should the cost of the Coffee Creek cleanup be in excess of that amount. “We have no idea what Coffee Creek is going to come in at to do that work,” he said.

Members voted 4-0 to make a portion of the Rainy Day Fund moneys available for the Coffee Creek cleanup if necessary. As part of that vote--and at the request of Park Superintendent Bruce Mathias--they also agreed to earmark $4,000 in cleanup funds for the removal and disposal of a block of woodland immediately north of the skate park at the 15th Street terminus of the Prairie Duneland Trail.

Mathias told the council that the trees need to be removed for the long-planned completion of the trail from the parking lot at South Jackson Blvd. to 15th Street. That trail stub will dogleg slightly to the north of the skate park through the currently wooded area.

As homeowners go about the business of repairing damage done to their property by the tornado, one issue in particular has emerged: a zoning matter, as it happens, affecting the owners of non-conforming structures.

Rod Corder--a resident of 100E whose garage was destroyed on Aug. 19 and home heavily damaged--told the council that he’s since learned that his garage was a non-conforming structure because it was built in front of his primary residence. More to the point, it was a legally non-conforming structure, built to Porter County code at the time and subsequently annexed by the Town of Chesterton some six years ago.

The problem: Corder can’t secure a building permit to replace the garage in its original footprint without first seeking and obtaining a variance from the Board of Zoning Appeals. And, on the other hand, he can’t easily build a new garage behind his primary residence because there’s not enough room there.

Can the council help? he wondered.

In the end members voted 4-0 to instruct Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann to draft an ordinance which would permit the owners of legally non-conforming structures to re-build those structures within a certain time frame--say three to six months after the casualty--without having to obtain a variance from the BZA. The one condition: those structures would need to have the identical footprint.

Lukmann said that he could have the ordinance in front of the Advisory Plan Commission in time for its next meeting, 6:30 p.m. Thursday, and that a public hearing on the ordinance could be held in October.

Town Manager Bernie Doyle officially submitted to the council his after-action report on the tornado, prepared in conjunction with Fire Chief Mike Orlich.

He also told members that, to the best of his ability, he has sent letters of gratitude to all agencies which assisted the town in the hours and days after the event.

Doyle did single out for commendation the members of Boy Scout Troop 908 for their superb work in conducting a house-to-house canvas on the night of Aug. 19. “It takes a lot of nerve for some young people to come out in the dark and they rose to the occasion,” he said, adding that members of the Civil Air Patrol joined the scouts in their fortunately fruitless search for injured.

President Emerson DeLaney, R-5th, took a moment at the end of the meeting to thank, one more time, everyone who volunteered his or her services in responding to the disaster.

Posted 9/15/2009