• ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
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      11 days ago

      It’s a common tradition for small towns to keep their old noon whistles going, decades after they stopped being used for their original purpose. There are tons of 1920s, 30s and 40s-era sirens that are still used every day as noon whistles, as well as some Cold War era stuff.

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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      11 days ago

      The town I live in would run the tornado/fire siren (it was the same siren but with a different pattern for how long it would be run for to call the volunteer firefighters to the station whenever there’s a really bad emergency) as a noon whistle every day. Around 2018 or 2019 they stopped doing the noon whistle, but never instituted regular testing so we’ve had super irregular tornado sirens when they are needed. During one really bad storm half the sirens failed to go off at all (fortunately the tornados jumped over town. There were tornados west of us, then tornados east of us but somehow none in town) then the following storm the tornados for half the town failed to go off. They’ve been testing irregularly since then but I’d really prefer if they performed monthly tests