Civil defence equipment

[Fearguy1234]

I know a good little bit about civil defence siren equipment and activation equipment ect, but I know almost nothing about the local equipment they had. For instance, I beleive that civil defence had some kind of ''Auto-Dialer'' equipment that automatically dialed schools if the county chose to, through the phone lines.

[Daniel]

In the 1950's, some schools had a device connected by telephone to Civil Defence. It had status lights for alert, attack, and other signals, and was often tied in to the school's local fire or air raid alarm.

[r4tbolts]

Yes, the little brown box ringers with 4 lights and labeled test, alert, attack and all clear. I've seen them in a few school offices and fire stations back in the 60's and 70's. If the box had the 4 digit dialer they were capable of activating the sirens. The boxes without the dialer were just receivers and would ring and one of the four light would flash indicating test, alert etc.

Another common one was the Federal Ten-Ten radio receiver in many school offices and public buildings in the 70's and 80's. A local receiver that OEM would broadcast info to the schools and government buildings.

[Fearguy1234]

Yeah, I wish I could find the name of them. There is however, a Movie based off a AT&T failure resulting in all of those boxes in the county going off.

[tboltkid520]

In my hometown (Rochester, Minnesota) Civil Defense utilized the Bell and Lights dialing activation system (Which, I believe is what you may be referring to) to sound off the Civil Defense sirens from the early 1960s, until 1984. The system was well known to be troublesome unfortunately, and led to somewhat of a "loss of faith" in the siren system due to malfunctions with sirens failing to activate and sometimes activating when they shouldn't. Then, in 1978 Rochester had a massive flood which caused even more glitches, along with wiping out most of the controls and associated equipment.

[r4tbolts]

In my hometown (Rochester, Minnesota) Civil Defense utilized the Bell and Lights dialing activation system (Which, I believe is what you may be referring to) to sound off the Civil Defense sirens from the early 1960s, until 1984. The system was well known to be troublesome unfortunately, and led to somewhat of a "loss of faith" in the siren system due to malfunctions with sirens failing to activate and sometimes activating when they shouldn't. Then, in 1978 Rochester had a massive flood which caused even more glitches, along with wiping out most of the controls and associated equipment.

The way I understood this system works is that the phone lines were run on a dedicated circular loop connecting all the sirens and ringers (some with the dialer, some without). Not all the ringers had dialers, yet where there was a siren the ringer box was also present in the building usually the office of a school, the radio room in the fire station etc. The old system here was on the phone loop till the early 80's. There were about a dozen sirens along with those ringers on the loop but only 3 locations I am aware of had the actual dialer being at OEM, another at a fire station south of town, the third one being at the State Police Post north of town which BTW did not have a siren nearby.

My former OEM Director explained to me the cost of maintaining the loop was costly. That OEM had to pay for looped landline service every month was one of the reasons the sirens were switched over to radio activated. Also said sometimes there was problem of the landline loop sometimes being accidently disconnected in spots when normal line work was done by the phone company (lot's of spaghetti back in those days so not hard to imagine that happening).

Someone on the board here posted a vintage news vid of sirens being activated during a tornado outbreak in the 70's. That video showed the dialer box being used. Wish I could tell you which video it is here in the archives but it was quite a while back.

[Pete]

Found it!

https://youtu.be/UArq6EGEn6s?t=5m23s

[r4tbolts]

Good Job! That's what they look like!

[tboltkid520]

The way I understood this system works is that the phone lines were run on a dedicated circular loop connecting all the sirens and ringers (some with the dialer, some without). Not all the ringers had dialers, yet where there was a siren the ringer box was also present in the building usually the office of a school, the radio room in the fire station etc. The old system here was on the phone loop till the early 80's. There were about a dozen sirens along with those ringers on the loop but only 3 locations I am aware of had the actual dialer being at OEM, another at a fire station south of town, the third one being at the State Police Post north of town which BTW did not have a siren nearby.

My former OEM Director explained to me the cost of maintaining the loop was costly. That OEM had to pay for looped landline service every month was one of the reasons the sirens were switched over to radio activated. Also said sometimes there was problem of the landline loop sometimes being accidently disconnected in spots when normal line work was done by the phone company (lot's of spaghetti back in those days so not hard to imagine that happening).

Very interesting information! I managed to dig up a photo from a page of our newspaper, Post Bulletin, from 1978. The article was discussing the siren failures and included a photo of one of our old SD-10 sirens, as well as a photo of the activation controls in the upper left:

[r4tbolts]

Nice find. Interesting article and pictures. Good detective work!