There is a video on YouTube which contains a recording of that incident. I’ve listened to it several times and I believe it happened in either January or February of 1971. I was only a couple of months old at the time it happened, but I bet the people who heard that alert were in hysterics.
I apologize for not including a link to the YouTube video, but I’m currently on my iPad and have trouble linking videos on the iPad.
You can find the video by going to YouTube and searching for “WOWO False Alarm”.
I remember when that happened....I was a kid on Long Island, NY.
The TV was off; my family was having dinner.
I think it was still light outside.
Anyway, there was a fire house down the road, and they had a siren on a tall tower. They would activate it in winter at 6:00 AM when school was cancelled because of a snowstorm.
This time, it sounded like an air raid siren, and that’s what I said to my father at the dinner table....”That sounds like an air raid siren!” said a young version of myself.
From what I heard at the time, all TV stations were supposed to go off the air pending a message from the president....Richard Nixon....but most TV stations stayed on the air with their normal programs.