Cities: The Sound Of Sirens

In this era of color-coded terror alerts, cities are harking back to a time when you'd listen, not look, for a warning. Several major urban areas have started revamping their old air-raid sirens; dozens of other communities are considering following suit. "It's not hard to think of scenarios with weapons of mass destruction where, if you can tell [people] to get out of harm's way, you can save lives," says Peter Ward, a founder of Partnership for Public Warning. Voters in Oklahoma City recently approved a sales-tax hike that included funding the $4.5 million cost of 181 new sirens. During the cold war, the federal government paid for outdoor systems to warn of nuclear attacks. New York installed sirens on every fifth lamppost (about 770 in all), Washington put in 400 and Los Angeles 225. With the end of the cold war, siren funds dried up and systems fell into disrepair. Now some locales have no coordinated alert network except for the Emergency Alert System--that high-pitched TV hum--to warn citizens of an approaching tornado or other emergency. But what if you're not watching TV, says the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Timothy Putprush. "What happens to the guy living below the bridge or the kids playing baseball outside?" he says. "Sirens are not perfect, but they're better than nothing." But New York City will continue to rely on the media to warn residents, says Jarrod Bernstein of the city's Office of Emergency Management, who argues that sirens would cause a "panic."

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