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school civil defense alarms

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 5:14 am
by bradhig
https://youtu.be/Aya-hBmLKkM

Anyone seen one of these? Where did they get the signal from? One was featured in Ladybug Ladybug They were gone when I was in kindergarten in 1979.

Re: school civil defense alarms

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 3:04 am
by Unit of Civil Defense
...When you where in Kindergarten , I was a Freshman in High School......any way, I don't recall seeing anything like that , but that doesn't mean there never was in the Topeka Public schools. At one point in time , Topeka was a target city due to Forbes Air Force Base. By the time I started school, 1970, all we had was fire drills and Tornado drills.
I would imagine that the signal(s) where sent via a dedicated phone line or much the same way a signal would have been sent to a siren during the Cold War era.
If there was threatening weather, I do know as a fact that there would be a phone call made from the NWS Topeka office to the Unified School Dist. office where they had the ability to call all the schools at once via telephone.

Re: school civil defense alarms

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 4:35 am
by Model L
it would be quite a simple thing to accomplish, although it could have been made up for the movie...

Re: school civil defense alarms

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 5:00 am
by Model L
it appears to be called a "civil air defence phone"

Re: school civil defense alarms

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 11:50 pm
by Daniel
By the 1980’s, those units were gone from public schools in Oregon, but most schools still had Model A-sized sirens in the hallways that were used as fire alarms.