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Warning Sirens   •   Siren Controllers

Dispatch/Paging   •   Radio Receivers

Telephone Equipment   •   Traffic Control   •   Miscellaneous 

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Message from the President of Audiotech Digital Signal Corp.

April 27, 2004

Warning Sirens Growing in Popularity

The new trend in communities now is to put outdoor warning systems into use not only for their emergency personnel, but also for their residents. Residents feel safer and confident knowing their safety professionals are on the job. For years communities felt the siren was obtrusive, loud and annoying. People expected emergency personnel to rely on pagers or scanners to be alerted to help the public for fire, medical or civil defense emergencies. That worked for the person wearing the personal pager provided it was turned on and set for a volume level they could hear, but it did nothing to alert or warn the community.

Studies show that the siren is the best way to capture people’s attention quickly. People could have pagers, scanners or cell phones turned off. A siren is the fastest way to warn a community of a potential disaster or emergency personnel are being activated. The siren will get peoples’ attention to stay clear of impending danger, even to get their children off the streets and clear of harms way. It is up to each community to warn its residents when the fire department has a call, weather problem or there is a civil defense emergency.

Fire departments, colleges, chemical plants, and communities with weather problems, even golf courses are installing outdoor warning sirens.  More and more people prefer to be warned before the fact, not after. 

Sirens are available in many different styles. Some sirens are electric speaker sirens and some are electro-mechanical sirens. The electric speaker sirens are useful wherever public broadcasting is necessary, electro-mechanical sirens are used when specific tones or a combination of tones define a warning.

Electric speaker sirens are most commonly used on college campuses, community squares, outdoor gatherings where public address or sending a verbal message is particularly important.

Electro-mechanical Sirens are more popular. Remember the old civil defense sirens every school had that have been discarded or put away? If operational, these sirens may still give some localities the opportunity to warn their community about floods, fire or any emergency by integrating some new system components.

Setting up outdoor warning systems ranges from being relatively simple to very extravagant. There are certain requirements for every system, but essentially, the community needs a siren, a way to control the siren and a method of activation.

A lot of times the community may still have an operating siren, but no way to control it or activate it. Electronic controllers have started to replace the old mechanical ticker tape activation. Electronic controllers for sirens offer many different functions. Some set the type of cycle, length of cycle and number of cycles. Good controllers even come equipped to perform a noon test function, have automatic reset and false alarm protection (lightning protection). A feature to look for is a controller that can be set up in house to achieve the results required.

Radio activation versus pushbutton activation.  Most communities have town dispatchers available for fire and police.  These dispatchers operate a wireless or telephone line transmitter that sends a radio signal to a receiver.  Today radio receivers can be used to start most new siren activation systems (controllers).  In a few rural communities, a volunteer may actually go to the siren location and push a button to start the siren to call for help.

Whatever a community’s financial situation, there should always be funds budgeted for warning all residents and emergency personnel of imminent danger.  We should encourage our leaders to keep everyone warned and safe.

                                                   Mark Goellner

                                                   President-Audiotech Digital Signal Corp.