I've been procrastinating about writing this post for a while, so here it is finally.
I recently went on a lovely trip to Italy, staying in an area near Lake Garda. Needless to say, the landscape was absolutely beautiful, and the man-made infrastructure was very fascinating to see, as it differs greatly to what I'm used to in the UK. We crammed a lot into the trip; visiting Venice, seeing a performance of Madame Butterfly in Verona, driving along the lakefront and exploring all of the tourist-packed but still picturesque towns. These were just a few of the things we did over the 10 days we were there, we really made the most of our trip. Also of note is that this is my first time abroad, adding an extra sense of discovery to the holiday.
Of all the things I thought I may see, I never thought that I would a siren. And when I say this, I mean that I had in my mind that the trip would be 100% siren-free, which was one of the very few things that I was a bit disappointed about. I knew that Italy did indeed have a selection of mass notifications devices, but it seemed that our agenda for the holiday was planned as to be as far away from any known sirens as possible, judging by the map I had to go by. The only place that we were close to sirens would be Venice, which has a flood warning system. However, I had noted that almost all of these sirens are on rooftops, and would most likely be unable to be seen from the ground (or, since we are talking about Venice, the platforms supported above the water level). Even the fact that the map I was using was part of a map of several other European countries suggested that there are not enough sirens in Italy that make it worthy of its own unique map. As you could imagine, this wasn't the happiest realisation for me.
Anyway, after stepping foot on Italian soil for the first time and getting acquainted with the concept of driving on the opposite side of the car and road that we were used to, we were given the opportunity to marvel at how different Italy is from the UK. Roadside advertisements were a new thing to us. Well, to be precise, this type of roadside advertisement was new to us. Whilst in Italy you get (mostly) neat, metal signs with various posters for McDonalds and Autogrill (another new thing), here in the UK we usually have decaying semi-truck trailers dumped in fields, with a faded message on the side, usually for motorway services. If you're lucky you might see some sort of attempt at a quirky feature to make you remember the advert. For example, there used to be a model giraffe posed atop one of the trailers, known as the 'M6 Giraffe'. A while ago he fell off, and he is still keeled over at the side of the trailer.
At one point, we were speeding past an industrial plant, when something caught my eye: atop one of the buildings, I thought I glimpsed the familiar shape of an STH-10. I had never seen an STH-10 before (none exist in the UK as far as I know), so I assumed that I may have just mistaken a similar shape for one. I could only make out it's profile, so I wasn't exactly sure if it was one at the time. But if it isn't an STH-10, what could it be? Not many non-siren-related objects have that sort of shape. About 30 minutes down the road, we stopped at one of the many Autogrills along the road to get some lunch. Italian cuisine consumed, I opened Google Maps to check if there was any StreetView around the area, just to settle in my mind that it wasn't a siren. There was StreetView. I loaded the image, and looked around: to my shock, it was in fact an STH-10. IN ITALY. Since I had never seen a Federal Signal siren before, yet alone an STH-10, I did not want to miss the opportunity. We drove back towards the plant, and arriving at it, we found the building on which the siren was installed.
And there it was. The STH-10, in all it's glory. Well, in my eyes, at least. I grabbed a few photos of it, and jumped back into the car, as I was not entirely sure if we were meant to be where we were. There were no warnings or gates, but we just wanted to be on the safe side.
So, without further rambling, here are the aforementioned pictures!
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Also, for those who are wondering, we did in fact end up seeing some of Venice's sirens. We, without realising, parked on the top level of the multi-storey car park one of the arrays is installed on. Honestly, they just look like industrial outdoor speakers, but apparently they are used as sirens, so who am I to judge? They do test apparently, but the information that I read about them I found a bit hard to interpret.
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Thanks for reading,
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