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Daniel
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Mon Aug 02, 2010 4:17 am

The city of Mount Shasta, California, kept their old Erick siren on the roof of the police station but had not tested it since the 1960's. It was installed in 1925 to replace an electrically-rung fire bell, but by the 1940's, a network of air horns was installed for fire calls and the siren was used only for civil defense. Later, the siren was reserved for volcanic emergencies, but was never tested. The horns were operated by a Federal Electric clockwork controller, and the siren was on a manual switch.

One day in 2004, something shorted out in a junction box and the siren turned itself on for the first time in almost 50 years. Nobody in the town knew what to do about it, since the air horns were abandoned in the 1990's and the siren had never been heard before. After a few minutes, they found the correct circuit and cut the power. Later that year, the siren and the original 1910-era fire tower and bell were removed from the roof of the building. The bell was mounted on the front of the fire hall, the horns still sit on the roof unused, and the siren and tower disappeared.
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coppercarl
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Mon Aug 02, 2010 4:49 am

One night, about six months ago, one of the Sentry 15V1T's here in Evansville set off by itself. It ran for one full alert cycle then shut itself off with no answer to why it went off. The Vanderburgh County EMA director commented about the sirens random sound off by saying that usually one of the sirens do sound off a year for no reason.
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Rheems1
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Mon Aug 02, 2010 2:01 pm

I can recall several occurences of that from when I was growing up and 1 or two that is more current. In Lebanon County, Pa all the fire departments get thier sirens from the Lebanon County EMA (they are issued).... our EMA was huge on 3T22 sirens so there were alot of them and they ALL sounded the hi-lo signal. I used to live near the Friendship Fire Department (South Lebanon Township) who had one of the 3T22 sirens (and easily the loudest if that is possible)...one night in the middle of a storm it wound up in alert mode and stayed there for 5 minutes and than it wound down. My mother and I turned the radio on to see what was going on but there was no indication of anything wrong. Come to find out it get hit by lightning which somehow triggered it... a very scary time. Here in Franklin County it has been done a couple times.... in at the communications center there is an all call button on the fire/ems tone board (this is the siren all call button and is what is used to sound the sirens for the noon test on Saturday and for in case of emergency). Well one night, a sleepy (but extremely superior, handsome, smart and funny) dispatcher sat up to alert a fire department on a run and somehow managed to hit the all call button instead of the Sta 4 siren button (they were right next to each other) and didn't notice it. So all the fire sirens sounded for a good 10 minutes before someone called this poor dispatcher up who promptly hit the cancel tone and order was restored. This also occurred on a Friday at noon when another dispatcher thought it was Saturday and did the noon test, we all told him about 30 seconds after he did it but for reasons that STILL elude me he didn't hit the cancel button so the siren's wailed for quite awhile before a police officer called and said "It is either World War 3 and I don't know it or this f***ing siren is broken and is promptly going to be shot with my 45". I assured him it must be a mistake on our end and scampered over to the fire board to push the cancel button myself.

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Oldiesmann
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Mon Aug 02, 2010 4:45 pm

Another instance from Hamilton County, though not exactly an accident...

Several years ago on a typical overcast spring day, the sirens suddenly sounded with no explanation (no warnings, watches, etc. - even the radio and TV stations were confused as to what was going on). Later it was revealed that the sirens were sounded after a police officer reported that he thought he'd seen a funnel cloud in the College Hill area. The county received quite a bit of flack over that, and later decided that they would only rely on weather reports from trained spotters in such situations.
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Mon Aug 02, 2010 7:34 pm

Sarnia, Ontario's old system of Allertronic 6000s used to set off accidentally from the wind, lightning, or human error. They were used to warn of chemical emergencies and tornadoes.

They were replaced around 2004 with ATI's. They randomly active or don't activate all the time, :wink:

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Gil
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Mon Aug 02, 2010 8:07 pm

The last accidental activation (I'm assuming it was accidental) I heard was in July, 2003. Prior to that would be sometime in 2001 or 2002.

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Fireman61341
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Mon Aug 02, 2010 9:19 pm

I read a book a couple years ago about the 3 Mile Island accident. It said that during the event the sirens mysteriously went off in the middle of the night and no one could ever find out why.

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Hacksaw
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Mon Aug 02, 2010 10:19 pm

This thread has been posted before, but it's been a LONG time ago.

Let's see in this category: The City of Santa Clara had their siren system go off in the 60's or 70's because someone in the Comm Center pushed the wrong button. They meant to push the button to open the door to the Comm Center. :oops:

The siren activation buttons quickly got covers installed over them after that.

San Jose used to have someone from Public Works drive around & growl test each siren. But, the guy used to let them wind all the way up! :shock:

Then, back around 1980, DeKalb Co. GA had it's sirens go off for a second or two every so often for a few hours. It was a rodent chewing on one of the siren control cables near the EMA HQ.
Last edited by Hacksaw on Wed Aug 04, 2010 6:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

Melvin Potts
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Tue Aug 03, 2010 12:20 am

Sometime back in the 70s two of Nashville's Tbolts were activated in early AM hours..and not by accident.

I wasn't living here when it happened, but was sent a newspaper clipping about the incidents.

Except for those sirens atop buildings, the old Tbolts had the blower boxes mounted on concrete pads at ground level and the control boxes where anyone could easily cut the locks and open them.

Someone cut the lock on control box of the Overton High School siren and activated it early one morning. One of my mother's friends who lived less than a block from the school heard it.

Early the next morning someone did the same with the Tbolt at Hillsboro High School.

Both of these sirens were located on back side of campus, so anyone who got to the sirens could set them off and escape quite easily.

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Tue Aug 03, 2010 1:31 am

I was troubleshooting a problem with the siren on Shepards Glen which is a Werden P-127 and I have a portable activation unit that I carry around to test the sirens in Hamilton and Clermont count. Well this day I forgot to bring the dummy antenna so I thought a small wire would do the same. Well I plugged it in and set the siren off and all the sirens went off and there is no cancel so in the next few minutes I got calls from the Fire Chief and other officials and proceeded to tell them this is why they need new radios.

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