By David Clarke, CQ Staff Writer
They were deployed a half century ago to broadcast ear-splitting warnings that Soviet bombers were on their way. Only two years ago, they might have been traded on eBay as Cold War relics.

Now, however, the air raid sirens that were once as much a fixture of the Cold War as schoolhouse duck-and-cover drills are getting a second hearing, thanks to the threat of terrorist attacks.

Last week, Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams said he'd directed his chief of emergency services to look into revamping the city's old air raid sirens for homeland security duty.

But it turns out Boston, Baltimore, Oklahoma City, Berkeley and San Francisco, Calif., and even Allegheny County in Pennsylvania have either bought, are considering buying or are polishing up old siren systems to alert residents that terrorists have attacked.

"Preparedness is about basics, and community notification is the most important thing," Peter G. Laporte, director of the D.C. Emergency Management Agency (EMA), told local station WUSA-TV. "Mayor Williams has instructed me and the EMA to look at sirens."

"The idea for the sirens is still in the discussion phase - the mayor is interested in looking into the possibility of getting sirens; the District's Emergency Management Agency has done some research into cost, technology and other factors. So nothing's definite yet," Williams' deputy director of communications, Sharon K. Gang, said in an e-mail.

Boston pondered the idea of deploying sirens earlier this year but then shelved it, mainly because of costs, which can be several million dollars depending on how many are installed.

"Maybe with this money coming down we can revisit it," said Stephen Morash, deputy director of Boston's Emergency Management Agency, speaking of the $3.5 billion Congress appropriated (PL 108-7) for first responders and emergency planning in fiscal 2003.

Also left unresolved, he said, is how large a campaign the city would have to mount to educate people about the sirens, which haven't been heard in decades.

"People were concerned with what the public would do when they heard it," Morash said.

In Baltimore, officials are plunging ahead. The city's Office of Emergency Management has requested $2.5 million in next year's budget for a voice-capable siren system in part because of terrorist concerns.

"Homeland security is a reason for everything, but we also have a petrochemical plant downtown," said Rich McKoy, director of emergency management.

On the West Coast, the University of California at Berkeley had sirens up and running by the end of January as part of an emergency alert system the school developed after Sept. 11.

Gimme Shelter

The sirens, along with the ubiquitous yellow and black radiation signs directing city dwellers to air raid shelters - mostly subway tunnels and building basements - were operated by the old Civil Defense Agency from the late 1940s into the 1970s. In 1979 the Federal Emergency Management Agency took over disaster response and preparedness duties and, by the late 1980s, with the Soviet Union slipping into oblivion, federal funding for the sirens stopped.

Some feel their comeback would not be a good idea. Sirens might sound like an effective way to notify the public, said Peter Ward, chairman of the Partnership for Public Warning, a group of private and public emergency communications officials formed in November 2001 by the MITRE Corporation, but they're probably not worth the price.

"It just doesn't get the information out there," he said.

In "tornado alley," and places with nuclear or chemical plants, Ward said, people already know to seek shelter calmly and turn on a radio or television for more information when an emergency's brewing. But in other communities the public could get confused and panic, he said.

In dense urban settings, moreover, people may not hear the sirens if they're inside a buildings or even a car, said Ellis Stanley, general manager of the Los Los Angeles city Emergency Preparedness Department.

"Nowadays, with cars as tight as they are and with the radio on, it can be hard to hear," he said.

Voices in the Wind

But others say siren systems, especially newer ones that can broadcast voice messages, should not be dismissed.

Unlike Washington and Los Angeles, San Francisco maintained its civil defense sirens and plans to sound them again if there is a terrorist attack.

Its system is old, however, and if a siren breaks down there is a shortage of replacement parts, said Lucien Canton, director of the San Francisco's Office for Emergency Services.

A new voice system would allow the city to broadcast emergency information to citizens in different languages in different parts of the city, Canton said. San Francisco has large Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Spanish-speaking populations.

"It would be nice to have the money to do," he said, but sirens are not on the list of equipment eligible for federal homeland security grants.

The Sound of Money

At least one company is hoping that will change.

Whelan Engineering Company of Chester, Conn., is one of about a half dozen companies - such as American Signal Corporation, Federal Signal Corporation and Federal Warning Systems - that manufacture outdoor public warning sirens. It hopes homeland security concerns will give a big boost to sales.

So far it hasn't.

"A lot of municipalities have been holding off until they get their homeland security money," said Phil Kurze, a general manager for Whelan's "public warning group." But, he says, "We anticipate selling a lot more."

Inquiries have gone up 20 to 30 percent over the past year, Kurze said, but he declined to name any cities that have contacted the company.

"What is noticeable is that in the past, people have asked just for sirens," he said. "Now people are very interested in the voice capability."

They don't go for a song. Sirens can cost $6,000 to $25,000.

Ft. Worth, Texas, is in the middle of installing 132 sirens at a cost of $2.8 million for tornado warnings, but they could be used for any emergency, said Raymond Rivas of the Fort Worth-Tarrant County Emergency Management Office.

Also in tornado country, Oklahoma City finished installing 181 sirens this fall at a cost of "several million dollars," said Sgt. Ronnie Warren of Oklahoma City Emergency Management Office.

Warren said the sirens were bought with tornado warnings in mind, but in late March officials began thinking about how they could also use the system and its different sounds for homeland security and other emergency warnings.

- David Clarke can be reached at [email protected]

Source: CQ Homeland Security
(c) 2003 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved