This is a Test

Every Tuesday at noon, a siren which sounds like an old wartime air-raid siren goes off. This is then followed by some incomprehensible but official-sounding talking.

The first time I heard it, I jumped up and looked out of the window to see if people were ducking in cover, running or just quietly sobbing. Much to my surprise, people were doing nothing. Phone conversations continued, no one evacuated buildings; no one blinked an eye. Life continued, and so did I, hesitantly.

I mentioned it to Mike later that evening, but as is often the case, my powers of description did nothing to convey the strangeness and alarming nature of the siren, and he didn't pay much attention. It took me a while to work out the pattern of the siren being weekly at the same time, and I had begun to think that perhaps my downward spiral of insanity had been accelerated. When I was skyping my friend and she heard it too (her fear was equal to my glee - it wasn't my strange imagination after all) so I made a plan to get to the bottom of this.

Sometimes my brain lets me down badly. My investigations were to take this pattern; email Mike and get him to ask his work colleagues what the siren is and for; then at a few minutes to noon the following week, find the source of the noise, and if possible write down the words. Genius ne'st pas? Or the reason why I am not in fact a detective.

So, phase one; the email yielded some alarming results. No one had a clue what Mike was talking about. My initial hypothesis was that it is was a test siren which would tell us we were at war, or there was an earthquake coming. Suggestions included a tornado siren and a siren which indicated that the bridge near us was being raised / lowered (every week at noon? er, no) but scarily, no one had heard it. So now I believed that it might have something to do with the nearby workmen.

Tuesday came and I set out just before noon, hanging round near the site entrance, skulking in the shade waiting for noon. Even though I was expecting it, the siren was still terrifying, but it was coming from a different direction and further away so I still couldn't make out the words. Still no one reacted in any way. Disappointed I return home thinking I would have to wait another week to make out the words. Then, my brain finally clicked into gear. Google knows everything.

So, every Tuesday at noon, a siren which sounds like an old wartime air-raid siren goes off for 15 seconds. This is then followed by the words "This is a test. This is a test of the outdoor warning system. This is only a test." If you want to hear it, you can do so here. In a real emergency, the siren will go off for 5 minutes and according to the official website, the idea of a weekly test is to remind the residents of San Francisco to be ready; well, the ones who can hear it that is. Mike works over the other side of the city from where we live and has never heard it. Nor did we when we stayed for two weeks in the centre of the city when we first moved here.

The sirens, as predicted were left over from World War 2, then the Cold War. Now they are used to alert for any natural disaster or possible danger. After the events of September 11th 2001, the sirens, which were previously monthly, became weekly. I read the website's many pages on how to be prepared, a little bit more scared than I was this morning.