The Siren Board

Does anyone know if any of those sirens are still standing and when the last they sounded?

For the actual City of Los Angeles:

http://www.wirechief.com/sirens/

There's also some sirens in LA County, but, most of those are inactive.

are any of the sirens in LA still active?

Not since the late 80's

atleast 100 SD10's in the pictures. got half way through lol

Were all of the sirens dual toned 9/12s? There's a video of a FS 500 that has a 9/12 chopper that came from somewhere in LA.

DJ2226 wrote:Were all of the sirens dual toned 9/12s? There's a video of a FS 500 that has a 9/12 chopper that came from somewhere in LA.

Yes, pretty much. The 500Ts all had the "small dish" cone on the front. The only dual toned 500 that had that was a 9/12 port setting

Long Island Fire Alarm confirmed on Facebook, those "flattened-birdhouse sirens" are short A frame Fedelcode sirens.
They were made in the '40's and were 8 port, low tone.

There are several threads on the old LA system, but I don't think it's been brought up lately. The last word I heard, of any official mention of the sirens at all by a government agency, was about 5 or 8 years ago. The County of LA was considering a reverse-911 system, and within the debate, it was brought up that there were still (x) % of the Cold War sirens standing and in potentially operable condition. Most all of the electrical and phone wiring has been removed from the sirens, so it was determined that the best bet was to abandon the idea, as far as I know. It's rumored that the Model 5 in Chatsworth just south of Devonshire St. on Corbin Ave., is still on the power grid. If that's true it would be fun to go climb the pole and trip the start relay...... But I'm afraid of heights!

The sirens are slowly disappearing as construction and road work goes on. In other words, if you get a building permit from the City on a street which has no sidewalks yet, or if your project is to interfere with the siren location, you are required to pay to have the siren removed as part of your permitting process. This way, the city gets out of having to pay for the removal, and the builder or property owner gets stuck for it. So the bottom line is that as of last count, about 70% of the Los Angeles County sirens are still standing; in various states of disrepair.

There is a small system of sirens near the county minimum security jail camp in the north end of LA County (the Wayside Honor Ranch in Castaic), but those are and were separate from the old CD system. You can see those sirens standing along Interstate 5, and also I believe there are a few on residential streets around the northwestern part of Saugus.

Charles

Where do they go? The scrapyard?