![]() Civil defense or "air-raid" sirens, as they were known, have continued to blare in cities and counties prone to tornadoes, and those with nuclear power and chemical plants.īut in most regions, sirens went the way of public fallout shelters, forgotten about after the Cold War ended and the federal funding to maintain them dried up. Baltimore, for one, saw fit to keep them running to warn the public of emergencies. Not all communities abandoned their sirens when the Cold War ended. "A lot of times, they try to crank them up after 40 years and they just catch on fire," he said. Decades of neglect have left the old civil-service sirens mute, rusty, and clogged with spider webs. More often than not, Wise said, those visits prove fruitless. "Since 9/11, a lot of cities are revisiting their old systems." "They're coming back, big time," said Ed Wise, a funeral-home director near Atlanta who sells, restores and repairs sirens as a sideline. Like a rocker, the warning siren - viewed by some as an ear-piercing relic, by others as a reassuring old friend - may be blaring again soon in a city near you. Faster than you can say "civil defense," the wail of the outdoor emergency siren, except in a few especially vigilant cities, went nearly silent. It’s called “Duck and Cover” and is aimed at school kids.It was a big sound in its day - loud, off-key, and impossible to dance to - and, with a push from the government, it captured the imagination of a generation. ![]() If you want to hear more sounds of the Cold War, from civil defense messages to groovy music, check out Conelrad, a website that pays homage to Cold War pop culture. If you want an example of how Americans were preparing themselves for surviving a nuclear war, check out this civil defense PSA from the early 1950s. Listen to my profile of Hanley’s work and learn more about L.A.s civil defense towers below: As a self-described siren hunter, he’s spent years finding and mapping L.A.’s old civil defense sirens and taking photos of them. One man who’s fascinated with these old sirens is Dennis Hanley. (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need access to the original image.) Dennis Hanley calls himself the “siren hunter.” He’s spent years finding and documenting L.A.’s Cold War-era civil defense sirens. Since then, the sirens have been ignored and allowed to deteriorate. had been turned into a prairie of nuclear ash.) That last test of L.A.’s civil defense sirens was in the 1980s. (Of course no one knows what people were supposed to do after L.A. If people heard the sirens blare, they were supposed to seek shelter until after the atomic bombs had fallen. ![]() They don’t work now, but during the era when World War III looked like it could break out at anytime, the sirens were supposed to warn people about an impending nuclear attack. ![]() During the height of the Cold War there were more than 250 civil defense siren towers, which, when activated, were supposed to alert people about a coming Russian attack so they could find shelter. ![]() I’ve always had an abiding interest in the history and culture of the Cold War, that nearly fifty-year span of the 20th Century when the United States and Soviet Union vied for global power and threatened each other, and the world ,with nuclear obliteration. It’s also chilling to learn how each country busily made plans to try to survive an atomic holocaust by creating civil defense programs, building bomb shelters and developing warning systems and evacuation plans for major cities.Īrtifacts of that chapter of Cold War history can be still be found in neighborhoods across Los Angeles in the forms of long-neglected civil defense sirens sitting atop now rusty towers. ![]()
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