Cincinnati Metropolitan Area Sirens

[carexpertandy]

I saw that Warren County is growl testing their sirens throughout the day today. Were there certain issues last night?

[CincyTboltman]

I saw that Warren County is growl testing their sirens throughout the day today. Were there certain issues last night?

Not that I'm aware of. Harveysburg and Lebanon may have had issues due to power failure.

[carexpertandy]

I just saw a few news stories posted about Hamilton’s former city building, here’s a link to one below. Could this potentially mean removal of the HOR? Someone should try to find out!

https://www.journal-news.com/news/downt ... i7RYlcSTBA

[carexpertandy]

As I have already mentioned several times in this thread, Whitaker Elementary School is slated to be demolished very soon, and now, I can tell you that it will begin over these next few weeks, as there is now a fence along the front of the property. During this time, people are sharing various memories and photos, and here is another picture from when the Thunderbolt on top of the school was yellow on a long stand pipe, before major renovations to the building took place in the late 1990s. I'm not sure what year this is, but I am very glad to see a color photo here!

[CincyTboltman]

Here's an article about the Mount Airy Water tower restoration. You can see the Tbolt 1000 on the tower still. Wonder if it's going to be removed after all?

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/ha ... -amenities

[carexpertandy]

I saw that too and wondered the same thing.

[carexpertandy]

Colerain fire station #26 is relocating, and the old station is now for sale according to this news story. Could it potentially mean removal of the Sterling soon? Though I also wonder if the T-128 next to the station will remain in that location or not.

https://local12.com/news/local/want-to- ... raith-road#

[Josh R]

I did some more research on Wilmington's original system that consisted of two Federal Thunderbolt 1000(T)'s and a Federal 2T22, each of which were initially installed in 1978. I also wanted to contribute some other information I found about the original and current systems. Newspapers.com now has Wilmington News Journal articles dating from 1879-2019, which before they only went through 1975 or so. The original locations were a Thunderbolt on East Birdsall Street near the Wilmington Public Library, a Thunderbolt on West Main Street near Bill Marine Ford (now Busam Ford), and a 2T22 on the Southridge Shopping Center on S. South Street near Randolph Street. They also had a siren (believed to be a Federal Model 5/7) on top of the municipal building in the middle of town which was originally a fire siren, but was later tied into the "disaster warning siren" system in 1978. I believe the Model 5/7 was replaced in the early 90's with the 2001-SRN-DC located in the alley between N. South Street and N. Mulberry Street (since removed/replaced with a Whelen OmniAlert OA4 in 2018), and I'm not sure where that siren went to (Blanchester maybe?).

Article from June 2, 1978 showing the 2T22 on top of the Southridge Shopping Center:

Wilmington_News_Journal_1978_06_02_1.jpg (662.67 KiB) Viewed 16344 times

Fast forward to 1984, the city decided to add 4 additional sirens in other areas of town where the original sirens weren't well audible. These sirens were Federal Thunderbeam RSH-10's. They installed them at Wilmington High School, Denver Park, the service garage on S. Walnut Street, and Holmes Elementary School. It was also in 1984 that the city decided to move the Thunderbolt on East Birdsall Street to behind Denver Place Elementary School. I think it was also around this time that they removed the 2T22 from the roof of the Southridge Shopping Center to a pole behind the building.

There were multiple articles mentioning the original system being set off randomly by various malfunctions, mostly during the 80's and 90's. The original system was activated by two-tone radio.

There was a 2001-SRN-DC that was installed in 1994 at the Wilmington Air Park, purchased by ABX Air and tied into Wilmington's system. It was also around this same time period that the 2001-SRN-DC was installed in downtown Wilmington in the alley between N. South Street and N. Mulberry Street.

I was searching for any articles with pictures of the original sirens and came across one from March 18, 1998 discussing Tornado Awareness Week. The headline showed a photo of the Thunderbolt that used to be at Denver Place Elementary School being serviced by a firefighter. I was pretty excited when I found it:

Wilmington_News_Journal_1998_03_18_1 (2).jpg (1.85 MiB) Viewed 16344 times

Wilmington_News_Journal_1998_03_18_1 (1).jpg (1.84 MiB) Viewed 16344 times

The original system of Thunderbolts and Thunderbeams (not counting the 2T22) lasted until around 2002 when Wilmington decided to upgrade the system with a number of Whelen Vortex R4's to have the ability to use multiple signals and for battery backup. Most of these were installed between 2002 and 2003, with a few more added later. Two of Wilmington's Thunderbeams were donated to Clarksville, and another two donated to Blanchester. The two Thunderbolts were also donated to Blanchester, but were never installed to my knowledge (I have no clue what happened to them). It does appear that the fire chief of the Blanchester-Marion Township Fire Department is still the same guy as was back in 2003 when Wilmington donated their sirens to Blanchester, so he would probably know what happened to the Thunderbolts. Maybe I'll contact them and ask.

The 2T22 was replaced in 2007 and the whereabouts of this one are unknown.

The Whelen OmniAlert at Wilmington College was installed in 2008 according to an article by the Wilmington News Journal.

That's about all I know for Wilmington's system. There are several other sirens across the county as well, some being reused from other communities.

I created a Google Drive folder with aerial imagery photos of the original system:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... tu1_xSdzMW

[carexpertandy]

Wow, cool stuff!

I'm kind of surprised that Hamilton County decided to test today, as I don't think they tested on New Year's Day 2020, but do remember them testing on the 4th of July 2018. Here's the thread for the video I took today:

viewtopic.php?t=30858

[carexpertandy]

I see that Hamilton County is part of a Tornado Warning right now. I am unfortunately out of town at the moment and not able to listen to the sirens. Anybody able to report anything?