The Siren Board

A part of me has always wondered what old/new systemsDetroit MI has had. I know of Chicago, the Twin Cities, SanFransisco, and Los Angeles but Detroit has always caught me up; not to mention that there to my knowledge, are no known pictures of sirens in Detroit. Not even on the Siren Archive! If anyone can help with information or photos, it would be greatly appreciated!

Eric (EL1998P71) has catalogued some of Detroit's sirens. As I recall, in the past they've had a mix of stuff like Tbolt 1000s and Thunderbeams. Some of them have been replaced with 2001s, but I've no idea if they're operational yet. I know of at least one Thunderbolt which has been inactive for years now, and sits there rotting away on a vacant building.

I wouldn't hold out hope; I was born and grew up in Detroit and they can't even maintain streetlights and traffic lights. I imagine sirens aren't even in the top 10 of priorities for the city.

I did now that expect the sirens to be in good condition because as far as I have heard the word Detroit, I'd imagine crumbling skyscrapers and old abandoned factories. (Don't mean to make fun of Detroit, I enjoy viewing the abandoned things from long ago).

go to youtube and search "EL1998P71 Detroit" and you'll find a number of videos.

Thanks for the help!

I was in Detroit for the first time a couple weeks ago and was blown away by the amount of abandoned, destroyed and burnt up building that seem to be everywhere. I saw a couple sirens during my short visit but could only remember a few. I saw a horrible looking Thunderbolt on top of a school, a 2001 near a shopping centre and a Thunderbeam on top of an old crumbling fire hall.

The only physical located I could remember was the Thunderbeam in the Highland Park area and believe me it isn't the nicest of areas.
http://goo.gl/maps/BFVqy

Forgot but I also saw what appears to be a HOR siren on top of the old Model T Ford Plant. I have called and they have no interest at all in letting anything go off the building.

http://goo.gl/maps/pyUe2

There is a T-beam on top of an abandoned fire station in Highland Park, and there used to be a Tbeam on top of the O'shea recreation center. It has since gone missing, either taken off the roof by scrappers or the roof caved in underneath it, and it was then taken by scrappers.

Detroiturbex.com has pictures of both the buildings and the sirens I'm talking about.

holler wrote:There is a T-beam on top of an abandoned fire station in Highland Park

I posted the link to this station in my above post. Really sad to see such a nice building just rotting away, I guess there's no physically way to get on the roof or scrappers probably would have pushed it off already.

There is no access to the roof anymore for the highland park ex FD. The hose tower staircase burned.
And the building has no power or wiring. The city has no plans for the siren when I asked them 5 years ago.
Maybe they'll get a new one from Wayne County?
There's a new FD across the street.

As for detroit's sirens..
The old system of T-bolts and T-beams are considered offline.
However the ones still powered on (cause the building owner and Detroit OEM are too lazy to turn them off) still work
sometimes only because the new digital radio system for the 2001's has problems. So as a backup they use the analog way.
And since they are using the same frequency as the old system, new and old go off.
Here is the old list. These sirens were last checked (not serviced) in 1999 for the Y2K thing.
Sites 1-20 are T-beams, sites 21-41 are T-bolts with the exception of 36 is an 2001 DC (I think, I'd have to look at my photo's)