The Siren Board

As you all know I live in Columbus, Ga, and have a good amount of videos of our siren system. I have two projects in school that I'm doing, and I wanted to ask some Questions and get some feedback. Here we go:

Columbus has a good sized system of Whelen sirens, 47 of them. They use four of the signals: alert for tornado warnings, wail for thunderstorm warnings or severe weather with winds at 55+ mph, attack for a release of hazardous materials, and air horn for an all clear signal. As anybody who has seen my videos knows they only test 3 of them, excluding attack.

1. Do you think that having this many signals will confuse people?
2. Is it necessary for the county to have two signals that are both related to windy weather?
3. Do you think it is a bad idea to not test a signal that is meant for a release of hazardous materials?
4. Do you think having an all clear signal is a good idea?


I myself have heard the sirens go off in wail at least once in severe weather before and can tell that it makes me uneven with my location being in a valley. It definitely is a better attention grabber than alert unless you sit between a pair of sirens that peak at 435 Hz and 560 Hz. I would rather the county use wail for any weather events and drop alert (I’ll miss the alert signal , but it would cause less confusion). I do think they should cut the signals down to maybe two like whoop and hilo because of their distinctive differences. Tell me what you guys think.

PS: Would it have been better to post this in the Off-Topic and General Siren Discussion forum?

DJ2226 wrote:As you all know I live in Columbus, Ga, and have a good amount of videos of our siren system. I have two projects in school that I'm doing, and I wanted to ask some Questions and get some feedback. Here we go:

Columbus has a good sized system of
of them. They use four of the signals: alert for tornado warnings, wail for thunderstorm warnings or severe weather with winds at 55+ mph, attack for a release of hazardous materials, and air horn for an all clear signal. As anybody who has seen my videos knows they only test 3 of them, excluding attack.

1. Do you think that having this many signals will confuse people?
2. Is it necessary for the county to have two signals that are both related to windy weather?
3. Do you think it is a bad idea to not test a signal that is meant for a release of hazardous materials?
4. Do you think having an all clear signal is a good idea?


I myself have heard the sirens go off in wail at least once in severe weather before and can tell that it makes me uneven with my location being in a valley. It definitely is a better attention grabber than alert unless you sit between a pair of sirens that peak at 435 Hz and 560 Hz. I would rather the county use wail for any weather events and drop alert (I’ll miss the alert signal , but it would cause less confusion). I do think they should cut the signals down to maybe two like whoop and hilo because of their distinctive differences. Tell me what you guys think.

PS: Would it have been better to post this in the Off-Topic and General Siren Discussion forum?

(1) It's not so much the amount of how many you use that would be confusing. People not knowing the difference would be the confusing part. Like Attack and Alert.

(2) No I think one would be good enough.

(3) I think it would be good to test it and make sure it is working properly. If they let people know they are testing it and do the air horn at the end I see no reason for anyone to panic.

(4) All Clear would be good for when say the release of hazardous materials was cleaned up and it was safe but for the rest no. If they did that in a tornado and say another one was right behind it it could do a lot of harm. In windy conditions no we can tell when that is over plus say it was all clear at 3:00 in the morning I would not be happy getting woke up by air horn! lol

(5) They have 47 Whelen sirens my best guess the reason they have 4 signals is they want to get there money out of them and be proud that they have a plan in place for about every disaster!

I really think there only should be one signal the sirens make. Whoop and Wail are probably the best attention grabbers, with Alert being second to those. People in general are ignorant and don't care or differentiate between tones. Many places get overzealous with their fancy new electronic sirens, and try to put a tone to every possible emergency. Nobody cares. The point of a siren is to be really loud, grab the public's attention, and make them go, "Oh, the sirens are going off. That means bad. I need to see what is going on." The more non-emergency situations [ie, severe t-storm warning....which in this part of the country means just about every thunderstorm.] a municipality elects to activate sirens for, the less the public is going to respond to the sirens. Unfortunately many parts in the Southeast are still suffering from Joplin/Tuscaloosa syndrome. They are setting sirens off at the drop of a hat, just because they don't want what happened in those places to happen in their towns. This is very apparent in Dallas/Ft. Worth, as well as the Atlanta area.

Basically, sirens need to be used for only real emergencies, and whatever noise they decide to make about it through a siren should be consistent.

In my opinion, having a signal for severe thunderstorm warnings is completely useless and merely serves to desensitize the public.

Take my area for instance. In the summer, our normal weather patterns result in a parade of cold fronts marching through, week after week, most of which are strong enough to generate severe squall lines. As a result, nobody here really bats an eye if a severe thunderstorm warning is issued, because it usually just means some high winds and maybe a bit of hail. The only people who pay attention are those who've been unlucky enough to have a tree hit their house or car - and even they aren't going to really take it seriously most of the time. Sirens won't change that. If anything, people will simply ignore them too - creating a major problem when a tornado hits and people are injured or killed because they didn't heed the sirens and take cover.

So, in short, my message is this: don't use sirens for severe weather in general. Save them for the real emergencies.

</rant mode>

OK, now that I've gotten that off my chest, my thoughts regarding your questions.

1. It depends on how distinctive the signals are relative to one another. Easton, MD uses attack for severe weather and fast wail for fire calls, making it hard to tell which is which - especially when the fire department gets a call with a thunderstorm nearby.
2. Not at all. See my above rant.
3. Yes. Test them all, and you'll raise public awareness, especially if you use voice to announce each signal. See, for example, Petersburg, IN's 2750s.
4. It depends. For weather, no, as it may cause unneeded panic and confusion. For tsunamis, etc, yes, if it's distinctive from the warning signal.

I've thought about that in almost the opposite way, for my town of Eau Claire Wisconsin, here the only tone on our mix of 2001's is alert. The county sets our sirens off for tornado warnings and bad severe thunderstorm warnings, which like stated above, and yes this far north, is almost always. Now or city encourages everyone to have a weather radio, but most don't. I do. Even at my mom's house I'm a little annoyed, we live two houses down from the siren, and she relies on that to wake her up. She told me to mute my radio at night so it doesn't wake her up every time a watch or warning is issued. Back to the point. Our county uses the same tones for all warnings. I think we should do what other Wisconsin towns have started doing: alert for warnings, attack/fast wail for tornado/ funnel cloud spottings. The sirens go of way to much for a severe thunderstorm warning here, most people ignore it because they assume that it's not a tornado. That also may be due to the weird phenomenon that almost always happens since the Chippewa valley is in a low pressure valley, the bad storms split and go around us. We've had about two tornado warnings per year for the last 3 years, and all have been radar detected and nothing happens. But one funnel cloud did form a couple miles southeast of town last year. Sorry for this getting so long, you get the point

1) As long as the citizens and new residents are educated as to what each tone denotes, I really think it shouldn't confuse them. Of course on a related note, a while back people who lived within the Perry Nuclear where quick to respond to a false activation, knowing what to do, then later they were informed by officials it was not a leak. (Though there is really only like one tone.) If people need to know what each tone stands for, brochure and a web page is a good idea to get to know about sirens and their potential (assuming yours has a site for such a big system). I honestly don't think it should be confusing as long as people realize what electronic sirens are capable of, especially having voice messages. If they are confused that much then they should act in a matter to tune into radio or TV. Around here is usually one tone and one tone only for everything; a steady signal.

2) Hey, who said one wanted to lose their valuable baseball cards down into a sewer drain just 'cuz of a little strong wind? In seriousness, two is a bit overkill for me that is. Wind is wind and is capable of destruction no matter what.

3) It is always a good idea to be aware of things that could affect your area at any given moment. I don't know about the area much, but for an example of trains - Even if the city is a railroad hub or not, you never know if one day some tankers/cars carrying hazardous material on board for a reason or another and somehow the material emits into a nearby neighborhood. If people are out and about near that area, a tone relating to loose hazardous material(s) and voice would be beneficial. If there is always a chance, future testing should make use of a signal of material release. It would give people preparedness for evacuation whenever the time may come.

4) I only know of one community that makes use of an all-clear tone. When severe weather is coming its way, I say to take precautions and seek safety from elements and get inside. I feel that an all-clear tone is pointless in a matter for those who are available to cable and radio. Those without them then it may benefit them knowing when it's safe to resume activity.

I prefer tones followed by messages. The public wont train themselves and wont read instructions, so the message is for announcing what the emergency is about and giving vital information on what to do.

I agree, if the system is voice capable, it makes no difference what tone is used as long as it is followed by a message. The only time I disagree is severe weather. Severe weather should be tone only. Otherwise, people may put themselves in harms way to hear the message, which in inclement weather will be garbled. For any other large scale emergency, like a chemical spill or flash flooding, use voice. If the system is mechanical or otherwise tone only, only one signal is necessary. All you are saying is "This is an emergency, go inside and turn on the news for more information." I like how Chicago does it. 30 seconds in alert for monthly testing. 3 minutes of fast wail for emergencies. So if you hear the sirens in Chicago doing fast wail, something is definitely wrong and it is not a test.

I personally feel there should be two tones. Alert for any situation that warrants "get to the TV/radio and find out what the hell's going on" as the message being sent, and attack/wail/fast wail/alternate wail (take your pick) for the very few situations where it's critical to take cover immediately without trying to find out what's going on--think a PDS Tornado Warning/Tornado Emergency with the siren's coverage area in the alerted area, or the extremely unlikely (in the US) air raid/nuclear attack warning.

Of course, I also say that testing should be at a specific time, on the button, every time, 60 seconds of Alert, then 60 seconds silence, then 60 seconds of whatever the emergency signal is, and *heavily promote the fact that this is the testing schedule and procedure* so that everyone knows it. That way, if they hear sirens at any time other than Test Time, they know something's wrong and you need to react.

Yes, this is the old Civil Defense era standard. It worked just fine back then; it should work just fine now.