[EAS] The California Fires - Another view

[Botterell, Arthur@CalOES]

Yep, sirens went out of vogue in the mid-70s... not altogether coincidentally because after oil prices rose people started insulating new houses more, which made it harder to hear outdoor sirens indoors.

Then folks started buying PA/Sirens... realizing that folks from different places might have different expectations about what a siren signified.  But let those things reverberate and echo down a couple of city blocks and the voice can become totally unintelligible.  They probably work better in the countryside, but I do worry about their use in canyons and valleys for flash flood warnings... hopefully the "what's that noise?" response will cause folks to become vigilant even if they can't make out what the voice is saying.

The best implementation I've seen... with the caveat that I didn't hear it in use... was the public alerting PA system in downtown Sidney.  Speakers on every corner... sort of a "cellular" approach.  Not unlike the "Giant Voice" systems on military bases... lots and lots of speakers, each covering a limited area.  But that's expensive.

And anyway, we on the origination end have to worry about folks who are deaf and hearing-impaired... just like we're expected to worry about non-English speakers.  That's become part of the flap about non-use of WEA during our recent fires... turns out that the deaf and hearing-impaired rely on their cellphones to vibrate and flash with alerts.  

Everybody tries, but we approach success only slowly... and ultimately asymptotically.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: EAS [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of bdcst

I don't know.  Air raid sirens seemed to be able to alert everyone who wasn't deaf?