Ohio_Man wrote: ↑Thu Jan 21, 2021 5:31 pm
While you do make some good points, keep in mind the NRC recommends multiple forms of warning (including sirens) and not everyone can check their phones at work. I'm a welder, my neighbor is a judge, my aunt is a nurse and most people aren't on the line 24/7.
When I wrecked my truck, I called my parents on every number they had. Home, work phone, cell Nothing. I wound up calling my brother who was playing counter strike. Had this been a different emergency, they wouldn't have gotten the warning.
Sirens do have their drawbacks but also cell providers do too. Remember Hawaii's false missile alert? Verizon throttling during California's wildfires? Dayton OH locals not knowing about the new messaging system until its first alert?
I get it a lot of guys on here have rose tinted glasses and overlook things but don't forget to check for your own rose tinted glasses.
Sure sirens are expensive, but just remember something an old firefighter told me.
"If you don't wanna pay for new alarms you're gonna pay with lives."
Well, I understand what you are trying to say, but those warnings will break through a phone conversation and go off on a cell phone, even one that is in use.
As far as the false alarms... sirens can have false alarms due to electrical failures, water ingress into the control cabinets, hacking or the system, or something as simple as someone with a ladder gets up and opens the box and pushes the button. It's actually much harder to initiate an EAS warning if you aren't authorized to do so than it is to set off a siren.
To the comments of rose colored glasses,,,, there is A LOT of that here... most of it is the silliness of how wonderful sirens are and why they should be on every block. And I am sort of curious as to what you are basing your comments on. My opinions are based on working on sirens for a living... having people 3 blocks away complain the sirens are not loud enough to wake them and neighbors to the sirens complaining that they are too loud and scare them. Which leads me to the statement that no matter what you do, someone will complain about your efforts.
Not to mention that you have a better chance in most places of hearing your phone than hearing a siren if indoors. And that even applies outdoors depending on where you live. I don't have a siren within 5 miles of me. So, unless I am outdoors, or have my scanner going and hear the activation tones, I don't hear anything. But I carry my phone everywhere and I do hear it.
As I said, there is a place for sirens. But even the great Franklin County system, with 208 sirens, doesn't wake everyone in the county when it's activated. And there are a number of homes that don't hear the sirens from inside. Mind you that's the biggest system in the country. So you STILL need other means.
