You said -- "I thought the noon whistle was a fire department test, since it was used to call in our voluntary fire department whenever there was a fire in town. It was also used for tornado warnings."
Well, the noon siren was once a week, and I believe it was on Friday (if I remember correctly). And it was in downtown Houston, Texas. And everything stopped in downtown Houston -- traffic, people, etc. I can't remember how many years they continued the practice, but I do remember thinking about how all the traffic just stopped in Houston (at least for one minute).
And..., talking about using the sirens for tornado warnings, I've been in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the last few months (off and on) and I've heard those tornado sirens a number of times, over the Spring months. One time a tornado did come within a mile of where I was. They also test the sirens every Wednesday.
I know I've seen a lot of those community sirens in Oklahoma. I guess they get quite a few tornados. It seemed that during the Spring, every time I came up to Tulsa, there was always a tornado around, somewhere within 30 miles of where I was.
When I was down in Galveston, on August 29, 2005 (the day that Katrina hit New Orleans) a tornado went right over the top of a building I was in, at the end of a pier. Fortunately it was a weak one and only blew out windows and doors and sucked up carpet off the deck of an observation platform and threw furniture out into the ocean. But, it was the only tornado I've actually been in -- with a direct hit of the building I was in.
And you said -- "I remember the fallout shelter signs in the schools, but I don't remember doing any fallout drills."
Now, the school drills were in Dallas, Texas. It was an elementary school. I can't remember how often it was done. It might have been every month or so.
Back then, there were bomb shelters on display at the Texas State Fair in Dallas. I remember those. I remember an aunt and uncle installing one of those bomb shelters at their house in Tulsa. You climbed down a ladder to get into it, from one of the rooms in the house. It was lower down than a basement would have been.
It was definitely something that was on everyone's mind in Texas, that's for sure. I would also imagine that these things would vary from community to community and also in different states.
Regards,
Star Traveler
The noon whistle sounded on a daily basis in the town I grew up & I know that was at least into the mid-seventies. My ex was a city kid & he asked me about it, cuz the whistle wasn't tested like that in Milwaukee. I had to tell him to watch for private cars with flashing lights when the siren sounded in town, cuz the cars of volunteer firemen didn't have sirens, just the lights.
I lived through a tornado when I was four. We rode it out in a *tent*. My mom had gone out of the tent to rescue her new swimsuit from of the clothes line & then couldn't get the tent's zipper closed again. When the tent's heavy wooden center pole was snapped, the table with all of our food was knocked over. Water was rushing in & the food was floating around, while we were standing there holding up the heavy canvass. With all of the huge trees knocked down, I don't know if anyone was hurt. Out in the sticks there's no warning.
As I'm writing this, there's thunder rumbling & there's a flash flood warning. I live in an area without any warning sirens these days. I know conditions aren't right for twisters today, yet I have an ear to the radio. I'm glad my area is covered by doppler radar & while it sends me to the basement way too often, I don't care. The closest tornado to touch down in my area since I moved here about eighteen years ago was this year & it was about five miles away. There were also two other roof removing events that were closer during that time, plus a tiny twister formed over my next door neighbor's house.