A Papamoa association is not satisfied with Tauranga City Council's decision on the tsunami siren system for the beachside suburb and is taking matters into their own hands.

The Papamoa Progressive Association has arranged for Wellington based Tactical Tooling to undertake a demonstration of its ‘air raid' style sirens next month.

Tactical Tooling will conduct a tsunami siren test in Papamoa and Mount Maunganui on October 19.

Papamoa Progressive Association president Steve Morris says the decision to enlist Tactical Tooling has come about by public demand and will be held on October 19.

'The reason we are going down this track is it is not just the PPA, we have been speaking to people in the community as well,” says Steve.

'The feedback from the community is clear, they want something loud that everybody can hear, and is cost effective from a maintenance point of view.”

Tauranga City Council has previously enlisted Meerkat systems to put together a tsunami siren system involving electronic sirens as opposed to the big air-raid sirens.

Steve says the siren test undertaken six weeks ago failed as no one could hear the sirens.

Apart from not being able to hear the electronic sirens, Steve says the air raid style sirens will be cheaper to install and maintain than the proposed network of 60 electronic sirens.

The fact the city council has already let the contract for designing the system and obtaining resource consent to the electronic siren manufacturer Meerkat doesn't deter the Papamoa Progressive Association.

'The second stage has not been agreed to yet,” says Steve.

'Council have a meeting in November where they are going to approve the second stage, letting the contract to build it.”

Steve says the air raid sirens are loud enough for just six or seven of them to be heard over the same areas of coastal Papamoa, the Mount and Tauranga that will be covered by a network of 60 electronic sirens.

The ongoing maintenance costs of keeping the electronic network tsunami ready will be far more than that of the louder, air raid siren alternative says Steve.

'That's why we have invited these guys up. These guys are engineers, they don't have marketers or planners who give them advice.

'We have been in touch with the staff at the council and we are inviting them to be a part of the test in any way they wish. We want them to be involved.”

The tsunami test is on Friday, October 19 at 9am in Papamoa and 10.30am in Mount Maunganui.