Air-Raid Sirens Where I Live.

Where do u live? Britain?

We had those go off today as well.........Called the police and they are testing them. which is weird because they only do them on saturdays usually the third week of the month.

worst topic ever

> It could a be a test, a severe weather warning or an accidental discharge.
Yes. Sirens have been known to have gone haywire and have ran during weird hours of the night for long periods of time. Sometimes, stupid kids activate them by unexplained means other than go after the control box on location.

Most of the time, siren tests are brief unless it's a scheduled specific tornado, or fire apparatus testing date of common knowledge with a lot of your surrounding area pariticipating.

Tests that happen the first wednesday, friday or saturday of the month at noon, or every day at noon, or every day at noon & 6 depending upon your community, are very brief tests where the siren is only at peak RPM for just a few seconds then allowed to coast down to nothingness.

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Many of the old sirens used to work from a control panel at the base, you could break into them with a large stone or hammer and turn the volume right up.
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That's a rather childish thing for anyone to do though.

> Air raid sirens are never turned off, the volume is simply turned down.
Boy, that's a new one. Especially considering the fact that air raid sirens are mechanical devices which have motors of various horsepower ratings. These motors power a signle cylinder which contains paddles. These paddle cylinders are called the chopper. This chopper then slices the air and discharges it through openings to create the sound.

Electronic sirens could be a bet for the volume issue...but not really. Due to durability, even the electronic sirens which are simply large speaker arrays are designed for only what they're meant to play. This avoids blowing the speaker drivers which happens anyways sometimes.

[Edited on 1-5-2004 by CrystalClear]

I live in Socal,

most likely if youre down in the san deigo/oceanside area its camp pendleton or the naval ammunitions storage facility, or lon beach, or any of the other hidden test/training sites in the southland.

You can call the non-emergency number to your fire Department, PD or Civil Defence and they can tell you what that particular sounding was for as well as their normal test times. Because we have tornados where I'm at they test the first monday at noon for up to five minutes with a steady tone. The wavering sound usually is not a test, we get a 30 second steady to sound the all clear.