The Siren Board

Very strange but evidently true:

Prankster puts siren back in action

By Mary Ann Albright
Gazette-Times reporter

After welcoming in the new year twice, Cold War-era warning device will be given a new job in Astoria

When a loud siren went off at midnight on New Year?s Day, it took law enforcement officials awhile to pinpoint the source of the shrill noise heralding 2007.

On top of Covell Hall at Oregon State University, a Cold War-era Civil Defense siren was rotating and emitting varying pitches heard across town.


Not tested since the 1980s, the siren had been forgotten until a prankster set it off on the first of the year, then again last week.

Now that the relic?s been brought to OSU?s attention, it will soon be put to use again ? as a tsunami alert in Astoria.

Lt. Phil Zerzan, station commander of Oregon State Police at OSU, was on patrol when the alarm first went off this month. A history buff, he began to research the siren?s history.

?It?s kind of an interesting relic,? he said, noting that not many people with knowledge of the siren still work at OSU.

It was part of a system designed to warn Corvallis, Lebanon, Albany and Junction City of a coming nuclear attack. It is the only one of its kind on campus, and probably in the greater Corvallis area, Zerzan said.

Covell Hall?s Thunderbolt siren was manufactured in the early 1950s and bears the Civil Defense logo.

In addition to the siren, Covell Hall, which was constructed in the late 1920s, has a bomb shelter in the basement.

The electro-mechanical mustard-yellow siren stands about 25 feet tall. It relies on blower, chopper and rotator motors to create a roar that projects in all directions.

After the siren went off on New Year?s, OSU public safety and facilities services personnel scrambled to figure out how to stop the noise. It finally turned itself off after about 10 minutes. OSU officials then cut power to the device.

Undaunted, the prankster struck again last Thursday, triggering the siren in the morning.

The first time, it was a cute and clever prank that didn?t cause much damage, but ?doing it a second time crossed into the annoying zone,? Zerzan said.

The person responsible sent an anonymous e-mail to the student newspaper and facilities services, explaining the motivation behind the prank, and apologizing for any trouble it caused and the damage incurred in accessing the sirens controls.

The motivation? ?A fun little project,? the e-mail said.

The person also said he or she will not trigger the Thunderbolt siren again.

?I?ll find something new when 2008 begins to roll around,? the prankster promised.

Zerzan only knows the perpetrator is an engineering student, and said tracking him or her down isn?t a top priority. If caught, this person could be referred to the Office of Student Conduct and charged with criminal mischief, according to Zerzan.

While perhaps annoying, some good has come from the prank, which brought people?s attention to the siren. Astoria will get a boost to its tsunami preparedness efforts, and OSU is now aware of yet another historical gem on campus.

?I really like history, especially American history. It?s kind of neat how you find so much of it on this campus,? Zerzan said.

Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.

[email protected] or 758-9518.

(The article can be found on the Corvallis Gazette Times website at http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/20 ... _siren.txt)

I'm surprised that after sitting idle for around 20 years that it worked at all. That's a good testament to just how tough T-bolts are. I wonder if someone on this board the anonymous prankster? Seems odd that anyone else besides one of us would think of activating a forgotten about t-bolt as "A fun little project"

I wonder how he figured out how to activate it, it must've been planned for awhile. They probably figured how to turn the power on, then probably started opening all the "boxes" to find which one could turn it on. Then they found the AR timer and saw the three buttons-of-power!

But it is good that they finally noticed it, and a T-bolt will be given a second chance at life.

A couple of old A-series Thunderbolt 1000s in Wichita have boxes on them with an access panel on the side of them to access the timer. Since these can't be locked, it is quite possible to open up this hatch and activate the siren that way.

douro20 wrote:A couple of old A-series Thunderbolt 1000s in Wichita have boxes on them with an access panel on the side of them to access the timer. Since these can't be locked, it is quite possible to open up this hatch and activate the siren that way.

That's stupid. So any old person can walk up and make the siren roar? At least duct tape it shut!!

They've got some old Tbolts scattered around the Chattanooga TN area here, and I wish they just had one last chance. There are a good amount of thunderstorms here. But more on-target would be the FS Modulator about 15 ft above me as I type this (on the roof of my dorm). Even though it would be a pain to get up there to figure out how to set it off (remotely, of course), it would be pretty fun. They claim that it's a "campus-wide emergency notification device" but I haven't heard it go off once, even when a tornado was sighted less than 2 miles away. (Of course, that was during a football camp, so I don't know if anyone could actually activate it then.)

One of the guy's who set it off emailed me asking me for
"coverage" on my site. He emailed me a mp3 file of the thing
going off. They rigged a timer to it and rehooked up the power
to the thing. It had been disconnected way back when.
He also sent me a pdf file of the school newspaper which
has a photo of the rig job they did in the rcm box. They
hooked up some kind of digital alarm timer to it and set
it off several times with the timer. Evidently they "accessed"
an area of the building the siren is on that's off limits to
other than authorized personnel. In other words they broke
into the area of the building where the RCM panel is so they
could rig the thing to go off.
When I first read his email I had the impression that they
were part of some group that planned to blast the thing
on new years eve. Then after I read the article in the school
paper I figured out that they broke into the place to rig the
siren to go off. Needless to say that made me decide to not
put up anything about it on my site.
If that thing sat for 20 years without being run or serviced
there's a good chance they screwed up the rotator gearbox
by running the thing several times. I would bet that gearbox
leaked all it's oil out about 15 years ago. I'm going to contact
that town that's supposed to get the siren and tell them it might
have some serious problems and that if they plan to put it back
into service that they need to go completely through the rotator
to make sure the thing is still usable.
Here are the pics from the school newspaper.

While I applaud the township for bringing the Thunderbolt back into service after the pranksters set the siren off, I am annoyed that by doing that they have done damage that could well be irreversible.

But it's still nice to see it being used again.

is there a way you could post the sound on the board?

Single or dual tone Tbolt?

Man! Forty miles from me and I have never seen it before. The only siren I'd ever seen in Corvallis was an old Model 5 which was removed from the previous fire station before it was demolished. The new fire station has two large bells, one on either side, but no sirens. And no, I was in California on New Year's Eve. At least it's going back into service. Astoria has no sirens that I've ever seen, and much of the old town is at sea level. The other towns mentioned don't have Thunderbolts -- Junction City (single-head Sterling), Lebanon (STH-10), Albany (Hedberg and missing diaphone or horn).