County
False Alarms Planned For Sirens
February 26, 2008 
No need to duck and cover or even head for high ground if you hear sirens in the next few days. The county is planning on some flash flood “false alarms.”
The Ada City-County Emergency Management Department plans to conduct routine maintenance on the flash flood siren system located in the Boise foothills this week. The work is expected to begin this Wednesday, February 27 and will continue thru Friday, February 29th.
A total of seven sirens have been installed in the Boise Foothills to warn residents of flash flooding in the areas of Cottonwood Gulch, Hulls Gulch, Crane Creek, and Stuart Gulch. While there is no information these areas will flood this year, emergency management officials say snowpack conditions in the upper Boise Foothills COULD lead to potential flooding if our local weather pattern turns unseasonably warm and wet. Officials say the maintenance performed this week will ensure the siren system is ready should the system need to be activated…like for the media event planned in the next few weeks.
During the maintenance, sirens may sound for short, intermittent durations (usually between 15 and 30 seconds) between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.. Residents do not need to take any action if they hear these short-siren bursts while the system is being worked on.
We especially liked this note: “In the event of heavy rain, the testing may be delayed or postponed.”
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Comments & Discussion
Comments are closed for this post.
Feb 26, 2008, 1:32 pm
Perfect week to test them, while we have all these guest for the Special Olympics in town. They might think WWIII started.
Feb 26, 2008, 5:19 pm
Mebbe they don’t want to test them during the rain cuz people nmight thuink its an actual flash flood instead of a test. So if there is a flood and you hear the sirens and it’s raining then you would know it’s for real and you’d run for safety…or something like that.
EDITOR NOTE–Which begs the questions:
–How do they know the sirens will work?
–Now that they have asked us media to publich the
press release will anyone know for sure?
–Have you ever called the cops to alert them to a car
alarm?
Feb 26, 2008, 6:07 pm
lol oh i am so glad not to be living in the north end anymore!!!! when the bench floods THAT’S the day to worry! At least we will have plenty of notice!
Feb 26, 2008, 9:56 pm
Look at it this way Slim Jim. When we have to worry about the bench flooding, that means the Peoples Republic of the North End has gone bye-bye. Not a completely bad circumstance.
Feb 27, 2008, 12:08 am
Hey, not everyone in the Northend is wacky. Just 99 percent of them.
What happened to testing these once a month on Saturdays?
Feb 27, 2008, 1:00 am
Yeah, most people haven’t paid any attention to sirens since WWII air raid warnings — and people didn’t pay attention to them for very long cuz of so many false alarms.
One of my favorite news stories quite a few years ago was from Hawaii, where people *do* pay attention to sirens, for good reason: One type of siren means the volcano is blowing, run downhill fast. The other means a tsunami is coming, run uphill fast.
One day, because of a short circuit or something, both sets of sirens went off at once. People in the uplands heard their siren and headed for the shore. People near the shore heard their siren and headed for the hills.
Took officials quit a while to get everybody informed that both sirens were false alarms.
I would have loved to have seen films of the crowds running through each other as they went both directions!
Feb 27, 2008, 8:07 pm
Collateral damage! Evil, but necessary.