"The new technology is great, but only if you're inside. "If there's some redundancy, that's desirable," he said.
#Old civil defensce air raid alert siren tv
Not everyone will be answering the phone or watching TV when a disaster occurs. While the city has the Reverse 911 system, McKoy says sirens are a needed component in the emergency-preparedness arsenal.
But after the attack, McKoy said he started getting phone calls from residents reporting that sirens in their area didn't work. On 9/11, warning sirens didn't sound anywhere in the United States. While old-fashioned sirens can't specify the threat - be it a terrorist attack, a chemical spill, a hurricane - they can be heard, at least by those who are outdoors, and more so in some neighborhoods than others. "But there is nothing as quick to get its attention." "There are a lot of ways to alert the public," said Rich McKoy, Baltimore's emergency-management director. Today, citizens can be warned through television (the emergency alert system), telephones (Reverse 911 and similar software), through e-mail, faxes, pagers and weather radios that turn themselves on.īut amid all that technology, the lowly siren - shrill, annoying, old-fashioned and misunderstood as it may be - still has its place, or so some cities have concluded. To be sure, there are more sophisticated ways to alert the public than in 1950, when the civil-defense act was passed and sirens were clamped to buildings across the country. The official said there are no local plans to restore the air-raid sirens. In Boston, a Fire Department official said yesterday, the system is known as "Backwards 911," which can alert thousands in a residential or commercial area to a potential hazard.
#Old civil defensce air raid alert siren software
Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., all have opted instead to put their money into quieter high-tech options, such as a software systemthat can call thousands of telephone numbers at once and provide a warning message. Not everyone is jumping on the siren bandwagon. Many more places are looking at installing new systems, including Wilmington, Del., and Baltimore, which plans to spend $2 million for, high-tech sirens. Today, there's a new pool of federal funds for emergency management, and in a country fearful of terrorism, battered by freaky weather, the shrill moan of sirens can be heard again.Ĭhicago, Dallas, Little Rock, Ark., and Oklahoma City have all installed or upgraded their warning systems, often with high-technology models that can broadcast messages. Civil defense or "air-raid" sirens, as they were known, have continued to blare in cities and counties prone to tornadoes, and those with nuclear power and chemical plants.īut in most regions, sirens went the way of public fallout shelters, forgotten about after the Cold War ended and the federal funding to maintain them dried up. Baltimore, for one, saw fit to keep them running to warn the public of emergencies. Not all communities abandoned their sirens when the Cold War ended. "A lot of times, they try to crank them up after 40 years and they just catch on fire," he said. Decades of neglect have left the old civil-service sirens mute, rusty, and clogged with spider webs. More often than not, Wise said, those visits prove fruitless. "Since 9/11, a lot of cities are revisiting their old systems." "They're coming back, big time," said Ed Wise, a funeral-home director near Atlanta who sells, restores and repairs sirens as a sideline. Like a rocker, the warning siren - viewed by some as an ear-piercing relic, by others as a reassuring old friend - may be blaring again soon in a city near you. Faster than you can say "civil defense," the wail of the outdoor emergency siren, except in a few especially vigilant cities, went nearly silent. It was a big sound in its day - loud, off-key, and impossible to dance to - and, with a push from the government, it captured the imagination of a generation.
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