PONTOON BEACH, Ill. — March is severe weather preparedness month, and one Metro East community is taking steps to ensure that residents and the hundreds of people who work there are safe from storms.
Dec. 10, 2021, is a day that Pontoon Beach Police Chief Chris Modrusic will never forget.
“I ran out of my house,” Modrusic said. “Going down the interstate trying to get there and there are trucks turned over and cars. It was horrible.”
An EF-3 tornado slammed into an Amazon warehouse just outside of town. Six people, with little to no warning, were killed in the ensuing collapse.
“It was devastating,” Modrusic said. “I can’t imagine what the families, coworkers, and everybody went through on that night.”
In the wake of the tornado, Pontoon Beach’s mayor said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker promised the village new storm sirens.
The state never followed through on that promise.
In an effort to improve safety, the Village of Pontoon Beach recently installed a new storm siren on the north side of Interstate 270 near Gateway Distribution Center.
“You’ll be able to hear the tornado sirens sound off inside the warehouse,” Modrusic said.
To add another layer of safety, the city provided five portable alert systems that will be installed inside each warehouse that can be activated by the mayor, fire chief or police chief remotely in the event of severe weather.
“With the tornados, anything we could do might save one person’s life,” Modrusic said. “It might save everybody’s life. You just never know.”
NorthPoint Development, which owns many of the warehouses in Pontoon Beach, has committed to placing mobile alert systems in all of their buildings in the coming weeks.