Air raid sirens.. do we have them here?

[SpikyJugs]

Watching the news and hearing the air raid sirens going off constantly in Ukraine, it has made me curious.

Do we have them installed in major cities in the UK? Would they go off if we detected an invading aircraft? Are they sitting there ready to go if a threat occurs, or do the military bring them in if we think we're likely to need them?

How do they work? Does someone get information about an incoming aircraft and switch them on?

I think they're incredibly haunting and I can't imagine how frightened the poor people of Ukraine must be hearing them go off constantly

Not the same place as Cocolapew btw.

We have one that's now part of a local factory so they test it once a year. Its about 3 miles as the crow flies but I still shit myself when I was putting the kids in the car last month. It sounded so ominous.

@TotoAnnihiliation

There is one in Birmingham that gets tested every now and then.

Is there? When was it tested? I live not to far from Old Joe, I expect it would be there. But never heard it.

I'm sure i read somewhere that all phones would blare out a siren and notification regardless of if the phone is on silent or not.

Really?

But without telling us all no one would know what to do or if it's real?

Yes we do.

If a town/city has a barracks it will (or should) have a working air raid siren. They were left over from WW2. Our city tests theirs quite regularly.

However, unless the volume is increased exponentially I don't expect that siren would be loud enough to be heard for as great a distance as it was needed.

Back when air raid sirens were in use everyone had single glazing, poor insulation, there was no real traffic to speak of, less internal noise and devices etc, we are used to much louder volumes of noise than in previous generations.

I think most likely people would be informed via text like we were about covid updates.

There's definitely one near us, it's intended as an evacuation warning if there was a large fire or explosion at the commercial harbour where there's a lot of flammable / explosive stuff around.

They're tested briefly the first Monday of every month, just for a few seconds.

They removed the sirens. I moved back here three years ago, expecting the usual monday morning testing of my childhood, and they're gone now. I guess the power of social media etc means people will know. Or something.

Growing up, I never realised it's not a normality for everyone else to hear something like that - I think I assumed there were other areas with sirens for things too. Sounds like someone up thread has one, but they're not wide spread.

I don't think we would know what an air raid siren was wanting us to do if they went off, government would have to put out some adverts on TV with instructions.

I live in a seaside town down south and I heard them go off one night about 40 years ago. I was just a kid and it terrified me so much that I just froze for the minute or two it was going off for. Never heard anything since though and, fingers crossed, never will again.

I was walking along a canal with my dogs and I heard this-

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/clydach-air-raid-warning-siren-16859408.amp

Not being from the area I hadn’t heard of this and wondered what was going on and only found out when I returned to my car later that day and asked a chap in the car park!

No. Civil defence sirens were decommissioned years ago. There's a few still in-place if you look. Flood sirens are gradually being replaced with text alert systems.

If you remember back a couple of years, there was a test of the UK text alert system. Not everyone got the test message, but quite a few did.
www.gov.uk/alerts

Thé ones that are tested in France are for the fire service I think. They are mostly tested on the same day monthly.

What would be the point of sirens nowadays though if there's an air raid? I'm not aware of any bomb shelters anywhere near me, my building has no basement I can shelter in, and the place I live has no underground system. So what do I do if the siren goes off? Just panic? I have nowhere to go.

I live quite close to a major petrochemical plant and there are emergency sirens there. They are tested every few years but my house is too far away to hear them. There used to also to be one in front of our local police station when I was growing up in the 1990s. Just looked on Google maps and it has gone (as has the police station!). The UK does have an emergency alert system that can send text messages to all mobile phones within a certain area that is intended for that sort of thing. Remember they used it to send everyone messages at the start of lockdown? I don’t know what happens to all the old dears who keep their mobile switched off in a drawer!

Latest Govt info

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.gov.uk/alerts&ved=2ahUKEwj9kL2Dy8D2AhUEUcAKHaUXBBoQtwJ6BAgXEAE&usg=AOvVaw1YfOiDzs72wfzvKvVu5oK3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.gov.uk/alerts&ved=2ahUKEwj9kL2Dy8D2AhUEUcAKHaUXBBoQtwJ6BAgXEAE&usg=AOvVaw1YfOiDzs72wfzvKvVu5oK3

I don't recall them in the UK for many years but in the village in France where we lived they tested the siren every week. A local inhabitant of many years told me it was to warn when the Bosch were coming!

There's one in Leeds that they use as a flood warning

We have them ( not uk). They are tested every Saturday at Midday. Scares the non local tourists!

They also go off all the time for the voluntary fire brigade, who deal with fire, avalanche issues, snow, car accidents, rock falls etc. it also acts as a way to warn locals there’s something potentially like rock fall in road.

Ours goes off every Remembrance Day and they test it… so if it went off we’d all either ignore it or stand silent for 2 minutes

There is one at my place of work (which dates back to WW1). It was used annually on 11th November for the 2 mins silence. But I can't recall that happening recently. If not, the only other time is a major incident and the whole site has to evacuate.

@HashtagShitShop

If I remember rightly, bracknell (or near there) has one for when/if broadmoor prisoners go walkies.

They stopped the weekly 10am Monday Broadmoor 'alert and all-clear' test a few years ago. Not sure how they'd alert us now! Maybe by sending a text to all phones in the vicinity.

@Cocolapew

We have a siren in my town in NI. The fire station was mostly unmanned years ago and the siren used to go off to call the firefighters to it.

Same happens In my town In the Republic.

Come to Plymouth. Every Monday at 1130 the Naval Base nuclear siren is tested. Scared the shit out of me the first time I heard it! 😂

Now, it just creeps me out - I'm not in Plymouth, but nearby and so it's a distant wail. Hate it.

Portsmouth Naval Base only test theirs occasionally - I didn't expect it every week here!

We don't know that Ukraine had them before the war. They'd be easy enough to install

We live near a large water works and they have a siren in case of gas leak. Always makes me jump, although we are quite far away