Civil Defence Sirens for ACT?

Mordd and sepi are correct. Phone systems jam in emergencies with people trying to ring Auntie Flo to find out if she’s OK.

It should be a condition of a broadcast licence that emergency messages are read out as soon as they are received. No readout – close the station for a few days or a very substantial fine. If there is nobody in the studio because the program is run by a robot, tough luck to the broadcaster. They claim to provide a service, they might actually do it for a change.

I lived through the 1974 Brisbane floods. That emergency lasted a few days. If you listened to one of the commercial stations you would not have known the floods were on. As far as I recall the same thing happened in the Canberra fires, only 666 carried any updates.

In my limited experience the first thing to collapse in a disaster is the phone system. In the late 80s I was marginally involved in an underground coal mine disaster, 13 men killed in a dust explosion. I was sent gas samples for analysis, ran the analyses and tried to phone them through to the mine management. The phone network was jammed and we eventually had to Telex the results through. Fax was no good, it’s just a glorified phone.

Someone with a better knowledge of radio can correct me if I’m wrong here. Hot gases from fires are electrically conductive and partially absorb radio signals. As I understand it the effect is greater the higher the frequency. Since mobile phones work near the top of the ultra-high frequency band the effect is much stronger than at very high frequency. Even at VHF I understand hot fire gases blocked radio signals to fire appliances in the Canberra region. So those with a mobile phone and a fire between them and the phone repeater might not get the signal anyway.

Don’t depend on the phone system, specially not the mobile one.

Hey, I like that statues of ‘obese naked men reading books’! I’m glad that Canberra has a place for artwork, regardless of the Canberrans trying hard to live up to their boring, sterile and characterless image by saying its a waste of money. Its not. It gives a city soul. Travel around the world a bit and you will see that creating cheap crappy boxy building landscapes with no decorative artwork does NOT give a place soul.

I swear, its like Canberra is suicidal in its attempt to kill off anything that would make it more interesting.

Waste of money? Drop in the bucket compared to what we’re spending on the mobile phone warning system, which itself could get overloaded during a really massive emergency. Seriously cost is the one reason that makes no sense to say no to something like this, its extremely cheap to setup and costs f-all to maintain.

I agree with Grail – installing sirens would be a complete waste of money and this proposal seems to be an example of a solution looking for a problem. What threat does Canberra face where the combination of mobile phone alerts and emergency radio broadcasts wouldn’t be sufficient? Large numbers of sirens would need to be installed to be effective in a low density city such as Canberra, and the money required would be better spent on measures to prevent bushfires.

Mordd – I’m with you.

The whole point of the siren is: look outside and turn on the radio.

Hercsie said :

There is actually an air-raid siren on top of the old kingston power station – I last heard it tested in 1995.

The siren was probably on top of Kingston power house to ensure it has power when needed. In many emergency situations mains power can be lost. A battery radio and 666ABC is better.

They use them here in Germany for natural disasters (snow storms and fires) as well as for major motor vehicle or industrial accidents. Freaked me out the first time I heard it tho, as they sound like air raid sirens here! What it means, is that emergency service workers from outling towns, can be on the alert, should additional help be required in the town where the alert (siren) was raised. Would have maybe been a great idea in the Victorian fire scenario, had the fires not travelled so fast.

“We could put air-raid sirens up everywhere, but then they carry no information. We’re not expecting air raids, cyclones, tsunamis, tornadoes… you’d need to switch on the radio to get the message to start with.”

Uh, yeh thats kind of the point. The siren tells you *something* is happening that is definitely not good, and to immediately find out using whatever communication devices you have at hand to get more information. Thats kind of the point of the system. If you don’t hear the siren, and you don’t have your mobile with you, on, or have one at all, how do you know to go turn on the radio again? And please don’t say “you will see the smoke out your window” theres lots of situations in normal life where you are inside somewhere and would not notice. The funny thing is you are agreeing with the point of having a siren while at the same time trying to argue against the point of having I siren, am I the only one who sees the irony in your statement?

We could put air-raid sirens up everywhere, but then they carry no information. We’re not expecting air raids, cyclones, tsunamis, tornadoes… you’d need to switch on the radio to get the message to start with.

So all the sensible people will be listening to 666, while everyone else misses out because the commercial radio stations don’t take emergency warning messages seriously. What was it? About 45minute delay between receiving the fax and bothering to tell people about it on air?

So IMHO, just stick to the current system and just get the commerical station to take emergency warning seriously.

There is actually an air-raid siren on top of the old kingston power station – I last heard it tested in 1995.