A bit of a brief history on the system. Before 1998, the system was a piecemeal network of fire sirens not tied into any sort of central system. In 1998, the city of Valparaiso, in conjunction with Center Township installed a system of 10 Federal Signal 2001s. Around this time, the city of Porter installed it's own system of two 2001s. Three years later, Wheeler township installed four 2001s, one in each corner of the township. The older fire sirens, an STH-10 and a 2T22, were also tied into a central radio system around this time. In 2007, the county received a grant to expand the siren system. During this expansion, 22 ASC T-128s were installed in the cities of Portage, Chesterton, South Haven, Town of Pines, and rural areas of the county. Also in 2007, the old siren at the Beverly Shores Fire Station, a Federal Model 5, was moved and re-installed at Beverly Drive and Wells Rd. This siren was only in service for a mere 3-4 years before vandals ripped out copper wiring making it inoperable. It was never fixed.
As of now, the system consists of 27 T-128s, 22 2001s, a Sentry 10V2T, a Model 2, a 2T22 and an STH-10.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... 0w2aOLHS34
The system is tested on the first Tuesday of each month at 11AM in three stages, each lasting approximately a minute. Each "part" tests a different mean of activation/encoder.
Starting in May of 2014 after a string of multiple siren failures, EMA implemented the "adopt a siren" program to increase public awareness about the system and help pinpoint problems. Within a month, nearly 75% of the sirens had been "adopted". Adopt a siren works by visiting a form in which you select the siren observed followed by its operation report.
The Adopt-a-Siren Program is being initiated in Porter County to increase public awareness and interest in the Outdoor Warning Siren system. The program also allows for more accurate and efficient monitoring of the system by interested citizens.
By volunteering to be an outdoor warning siren observer, we hope to receive feedback from you if you witness faulty or abnormal siren activation based on your visual and audible observations. We want to thank you for your interest in the Adopt–A–Siren Program and your willingness to volunteer as a neighborhood outdoor warning siren observer.
As a neighborhood outdoor warning siren observer, it is anticipated that you will have the ability to visually see and hear the siren you “adopt” on most days the sirens are tested. Porter County tests the Outdoor Warning Siren System on the first Tuesday of each month. The sirens are activated at approximately 11:00 AM for three minutes in which they rotate in circular fashion if the observed siren is a single speaker on a pole. If abnormal or faulty siren behavior is observed during a siren test or any other activation, or if you witness a condition that may put the siren at risk of functioning properly (such as a leaning pole or obstructing tree limbs), please report your observations and concerns to us as soon as possible.
Although it would be extremely helpful, you do not have to report on a siren that is operating correctly.
Each siren has a number painted on the control box located on the siren pole. When enrolling in the program we require that you first personally verify the siren number on the control box for the siren you are going to adopt and then enroll in the program.
To provide accurate observations we desire that you be out-of-doors when you make your observations and your observing position be no more than 1/4 mile from the siren of interest. Never put yourself or anyone at risk of physical harm when attempting to observe or report siren activation.
Here is the form for your viewing pleasure.
http://sirens.pcema.org/
They are very enthusiastic about the program.
Shortly after the program was implemented, it was determined that the system no longer fit the needs of the county, and that a countywide upgrade is necessary.
An article describing the upgrade:
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/port ... 35994.html
During a recent county commissioners meeting, the EMA staff went into great detail about the system...
Mr. Shirley “Good afternoon. Good to see everybody today. I have a short little
presentation. We are here to talk about the County’s siren system, or the early alert
warning system, if you will. The County currently has 54 sirens ranging in age from 50
plus years to the newest being purchases in approximately 2008. We purchased 22
sirens at that time with grant money. We have a mix of five different brands of sirens. I
believe in 2010 or 2011 the County took over the responsibility for the sirens,
maintenance and changing batteries and things like that. At that time when we acquired
all the other sirens in the County, we acquired a lot of problems. There is a lot of sirens
that had not been properly maintained and issues like that. A few of the sirens were
narrow banded, most of them were not. Narrow banding is estimated at approximately
$500.00 per siren or about $25,000.00 for narrow banding alone. The major contract for
sirens with the local vendor was not renewed this past January. In the Fall of 2013 my
department conducted an inspection of all the sirens in Porter County. At that time we
found 14 sirens that did not work, either through dead batteries or faulty wiring or
whatever the case was. At that time, we replaced all the batteries we found defective,
some of the sirens had frozen heads where they wouldn’t rotate with just a lot of issues.
Some of the battery storage boxes and one circuit board box were completely full of
rust. My EMA has a volunteer staff of 25 to 30 people, all of who are not paid, but
volunteers. I approached my volunteers and recruited several of them to help maintain4
the sirens. All of these volunteers are well qualified in the area of electronics. In fact,
one of those volunteers was hired this week by Porter County IT Department, Matt
Melton. Welcome, Matt. Last winter was very harsh on siren batteries causing many to
freeze and burst. This spring we replaced another 10 sets of batteries. So the last year
we’ve replaced 24 sets of batteries at an average of $400 to $500 per box to fix them.
The past year we put together a spread sheet of all the siren locations with the type of
siren, the age, proper location and number of actual locations. I say the number ofactual
location because when I took over the job I was literally given the board that Matt is
putting up here and was told here is where all the sirens are. Not exactly high-tech. It
does work, this is where all the sirens are except for the one that was torn down and
nobody told anybody. So this is what we were working with.
We have upgraded our system, we have spread sheets that show every siren location, the manufacturer, the
approximate age of the siren; some of them we can’t tell the age because they are
literally too old. We have some sirens that are World War 2 air raid sirens. We have had
problems with padlocks on the electrical boxes being cut off, especially in the areas of
schools the sirens get turned off frequently by people in the neighborhood, kids, we
don’t know. Vandalism has been an issue. One siren in the north part of the County was
so severely damaged by vandalism it had to be removed, it wouldn’t function. Several of
the current sirens in use date from the early warning system in the 1950’s. Those sirens
have a typical range of a quarter to a half of a mile. Modern new sirens have a range of
4 miles, big difference. We have locations in the County that have increased in
population in the past 10 years are in need of siren coverage.
The immediate need is for better siren maintenance. This can be accomplished with the use of a two-way radio
system for all of the sirens in the County. This two-way radio system can be used to run
daily, weekly or even monthly tests on the system. The system will also accomplish the
upgrade to narrow banding of the radios, which I told earlier is approximately
$25,000.00 just to accomplish that. With the radios not being narrow banded, some of
the radios or sirens are receiving a signal but it is so weak it won’t activate the siren. We
have to do something along that line. We have obtained estimates from three vendors,
and these are estimates only, for the installation of the two-way radio systems
countywide. The estimates range from $260,000.00 down to $212,000.00. So we are
looking at approximately $230-240, somewhere in that range. It has not been bid. This
would also include upgrades to the Porter County 911 Dispatch Center. Currently they
have one box in the dispatch center and Matt will go into that in a little more detail.
Basically the dispatchers have to leave their console, go across the room, do a series of
turn-ons and then push the button. If it doesn’t work there is a back-up system if they
have the ability or the time to operate that system. It’s two people dependent right now.
What we are proposing here is to replace that with a two-way system. With the two-way
system, again, Wendy is going to go into more detail. Basically the National Weather
Service will be assisting in the activation of the sirens. So it takes the human element
out of it and it takes less time. Keep in mind the two-way system we are talking about
here does not fix any sirens, it just tells us when they need to be fixed. So I don’t know if
the day of the siren test, the first Tuesday of every month at 11:00, that is not the time to
find out there’s a problem with the siren. The time to find out is a week or two before so
we can get it fixed, or before the storm comes and we set the sirens off and they don’t
activate; that is too late to be finding out. So we want to be proactive as much as we
can.
With this two-way system they are going to talk about, I could literally check it if I
am in Minnesota again, like I was the last storm. I literally, when those alarms are
activated I will be notified by cell phone, by email, there is a number of different ways
we could be notified. But that is just a short synopsis of where we are at. We work on
the system every day. Right now there is one siren in Chesterton that malfunctioned, we
had two of the battery charges that just quit. When the battery charges quit, the siren is
not going to operate very long. It will operate until the charge is gone and that is it. So I
will turn it over to Matt.
(Mr. Melton conducted a Power Point presentation to explain the sirens in Porter
County.)
Matt Melton “In June of this year we started the Adopt a Siren Program and
started publishing out to people that live in the area of the sirens to get on the website
and let us know if it sounded, it if didn’t sound, if the siren was far enough. In 2 days I
got 40 out of 55 sirens adopted and had a couple of problems with Jackson Elementary.5
At the school we have a neighbor or some of the area people who keep turning off the
power to that siren. They notified us and we have gone out there to drill through the box
and put padlocks on there to keep that from happening again. We also have (inaudible)
and former voice receivers in several buildings in schools in the area. Those are set off
with the same frequency as set off (inaudible)… so if we set off those tornado alarms.
These certain locations have radios that will go off inside the buildings as well. With 100
more of these we could build a place for them on every public and private school in the
area along with Porter County Government buildings. The only government building
right now that has one is the Porter County Juvenile. We do not have anything here or
in the other complexes around here. When these dispatch with one click we will be able
to alert every school, government office who has one of these to a severe storm
disaster or a shoot or lock down situation. I will show you the ones that work but they
need to be upgraded, they are all currently one way, we cannot tell if the siren activates.
And these also do not have battery boxes. So when the power fails these sirens will not
go off, which as we’ve seen lately, the first set of storms that comes through is what
knocks out the power, the second set of storms is what has that tornado activity. So
these wouldn’t be able to sound. In Ogden Dunes, this is a 1950’s era siren. It does not
screen as well as it used to, it does not cover most of the Ogden Dunes area. Liberty
Township, this one pretty much just covers the fire station and the school. Beverly
Shores, this one is actually the one that is out of order right now, it was broken into by
vandals and copper stolen out of it, it is down right now. The only one working in
Beverly Shores is the one at the town hall. Hebron has a century siren over by Pace
Market, it works but it is not, if the power is out, this one will fail as well. Valparaiso
University downtown coverage over by where Blue Mountain Publishing used to be, has
this one-way siren, AC only. There have a been a few gaps in ..(inaudible).. yes, this is
the Ogden Dunes siren where you can see the siren sits low by the water plant, it is not
up high enough that it can actually get out and reach all the people that live up in that
area. We don’t really get any beach coverage from the current siren. This is where we
have a siren that has been struck by lightning years ago, the siren had to be taken
down. We’ve got a gap at Highway 6 and 149 at only about 100 watts.”
Com. Blaney “What marks the gap on that, the green circle?”
Mr. Melton “The green circle, yes. This is the Coffee Creek Subdivision area,
there’s no coverage over that way. Union Township, this is the area that has grown up
the last few years, there’s no coverage over in that area. Porter Township over on State
Road 2, I know there is property over there they are looking to build a 400 home
subdivision, there is no coverage there, the closest siren is at the Fire Department at
Boone Grove High School and then Aberdeen. The airport has no coverage right now,
the sirens over by the county government complex and then up over to Washington
Township. The area of 149 and 100 West down the Malden community, when the Kouts
siren wasn’t working the people of Malden couldn’t hear anything at all. You can barely
hear the coverage there. (inaudible)… to purchase some of the one-way sirens could be
repurposed right now, we have low beach coverage. The Indiana Dunes campground
has no coverage whatsoever and (inaudible).. has no coverage. Those one-ways could
be repurposed and moved up into that area, it’s not necessarily much to make those
sirens could sound, but at least we’ve got some coverage up there without purchasing
the two-way sirens. This is the current process and C.J. can verify, we go through the
dispatch. It got thrown a power switch, turn on the actual key units on them,
(inaudible)…. Do this 3 times to get this to sound the full 3 minutes. This is their console
right now with the two-way system we would be adding a computer to this set up right
here and then they would be getting a second phone which is the grey box on the right.
When the National Weather Service issues their tornado warning that box will sound, it
will also signal the computer to go ahead and set off the tornado warning sirens. It will
also set off all those informers that we have in all the schools and public buildings right
now. They thing they are in the process of upgrading to next year is the ..(inaudible)
system which is (inaudible).. the National Weather System will be issuing …. in certain
areas, the draw on a map. The software will be able to pick up once the tornado siren
has been sighted on that map, it will set off those sirens. So that up north if you have
perfect weather you are not sitting there going why is the tornado siren going off when
you’ve got a warning down south. Right now the only way to ….the sirens is county
wide. “6
Wendy Josis “Good afternoon, my name is Wendy Josis. I am with Federal
Signal. What I am going to describe is one of the options you would have to bring your
siren system up to date and to be able to add some monitoring capabilities as well as
new technology to make it a little more reliable for you, actually a lot more reliable. The
two-way system capabilities, what this is, is putting a two-way radio into all of the sirens
to that not only will they get the radio signal to activate but they are going to be sending
back information as well. This is very critical information. The type of information is
whether or not the siren has power running to it; whether or not somebody has opened
the box; whether there is a low battery; intrusion or if there is something wrong with the
siren rotation. What this will do is send that information back to the software, the
software will actually email out the information to whoever is in charge of monitoring the
system. The federal commander digital system as he said, would be a software that is
going to be ran on a basic server within the dispatch. It will have the encoder with it and
the radio. Let me go back and explain a little about federal signal. Everything I am
describing is actually designed, engineered and created, and manufactured and
assembled at University Park, Illinois, just right up the street. So everything from the
siren head to the electronic controller to the encoder and the software, is all created by
our engineers to make sure that the entire system has continuity and the reliability and it
all works together so there is no third party system that is pieced together to make a
siren system, it is all federal signal from start to finish. This gives you an idea of what a
new system would do for you. All of it resides around the commander software which
would allow you to have hot keys or hot buttons where you could program it to just do it
county wide, one button everything goes out. You could also zone it by zones,
northwest, southwest, or you could do it individually in activation. Another option is what
we call the commander client software. What this will do is allow you via the internet to
access this software and the activation from anywhere. So even if Russ is out of state,
wherever, he can get an email saying something is wrong with the sirens and from his
phone he can pull it up and monitor the system and find out what is going on. Also, if
you have weather spotters in the field they will be able to activate this system via the
internet wherever they might be. The second step to that is adding the auto activation
system to it and what this is, is an EAS-Emergency Alert System, that would be listening
for NOA to send out a warning for your county that says there is a tornado warning
coming. It will pick up that alert and will automatically activate the sirens for you. So
there is absolutely no human intervention that will be needed for that. At that point once
the sirens were activated dispatch, and everyone, will know and the sirens would initiate
contact back to EAS, I received the signal and I have activated, and everything is fine.
For some reason if the signal wasn’t sent and you know to what siren did not get
activated you can take further measures from that. I will open it up if anyone has any
questions or if I left anything out.”
Com. Evan “Cost difference between the sirens. Obviously some of these sirens
are going to have to be replaced from the gaps in the areas. The new sirens will reach a
radius of four miles, and some of the old sirens, a quarter of a mile. To put more sirens
in, wouldn’t it be more cost effective to change to the more modern siren?”
Ms. Josis “Actually four miles is a little bit overstating. I think it is more like 2 ½ to
3 miles, the diameter of coverage. The siren heads that are out there right now,
mechanical siren heads, life expectancy of those are anywhere from 30 to 40 years.
The ones that you have out there that are still chugging along, those are federal signal
ones from the 1950’s, so I don’t think that upgrading those siren heads is necessarily a
good way to invest into it. What you need to invest is in the electronics. Obviously the
electronics has much shorter limited life, the technology you have is not the newest
technology out there, they are the one way only. So if you were going to spend money
into your system, I wouldn’t really redesign what is already out there as far as
mechanical heads except for the old ones that obviously need some battery backup.
What I would do is invest in the electronic system to make sure you have new
electronics out there that is functioning well, and get a better protocol or a better way to
get the activation out there.
Read more here:
http://www.porterco.org/AgendaCenter/Vi ... 022014-349
While the 2001s that were installed by Braniff Communications are holding up fine, the same cannot be said for the T-128s. These were installed by mom-and-pop radio shop out of Hammond, Tri Electronics. As county siren tech Matt Melton told me,
"The Americans are the worst. They used flex and didn't seal the fittings so the water comes down and fills the battery boxes."
Matt also says he prefers the 2001s because of the simpler design of their controls, much easier to troubleshoot. Because of this, Matt got a quote for 18 508s and had a Federal rep come speak at the county commissioners meeting posted above. This sounds like a great system, but unfortunately as Matt told me yesterday ASC won the bid. ANS Services will be doing the installations. The siren model(s) has not been selected yet, although I assume they will be T-128s.
Matt, Austin, and I are all very excited for this project. Matt is also tossing around the idea of a countywide, daily noon blast, in addition to the 1st Tuesday of the month test.
Installations will start within the next few months. Both Austin and I are in regular contact with Matt, so I'll keep y'all updated!
