Volunteers tested area tornado sirens Saturday morning in preparation of Severe Weather Awareness Week, which begins on Monday.

There is no mistaking that sound if you're from heartland, never too soon to be ready if Mother Nature strikes.

"Don't go outside to watch a tornado, go to your basement,” said Phil Keyes of ARES, the Amateur Radio Emergency Service of Douglas County, one of several volunteers checking the 112 sirens throughout the county.

ARES and the Ak-Sar Ben Amateur Radio Club do the siren test at no cost to taxpayers. When it's blaring above ground, these folks are about 80 feet underground in the Douglas County Emergency Operation Center at 24th and Gold.

"Every year we detect some sort of a problem with at least one or more sirens and then that is reported to Douglas County Emergency Management and then they proceed to get the sirens repaired,” said ARES Steve Schmitz.

They found only four problems out of the 112 county sirens.

It's not just the sirens that need to be ready for severe weather. Experts recommend keeping 72 hours worth of supplies on hand in case of an emergency, items like bottled water, a battery-powered radio for communication and a flashlight in case the power goes out.

These are the exact items Gina O'Doherty and Kerry Callahan have.

"If I start seeing things getting bad I get a radio together, flashlight, some pillows and I've already kind of have those things in the basement,” says O’Doherty. “Then it's just a matter of when that siren goes off, I’m downstairs in a corner."

"We have blankets downstairs, we have bottled water down there already,” says Callahn. “We just go downstairs when they tell us to and when it looks bad and wait."

Waiting to test the sirens is something Keyes and his volunteers aren't willing to do. "That's why we're here, to make sure it works right."