Houston, TX Thunderbolts

[coop866]

It looks to be in very poor condition.

[FedTB]

It's hard to believe that Houston never activated these sirens in the past for Tornado Warnings! They were strictly there in case of a nuclear attack only. What a waste of money to ONLY use them for that! They were behind the times, for sure, compared to thousands of other cities and towns across the U.S. who got smart and decided they were going to use their sirens for weather warnings as well.

[TboltTX1]

Well, it looks like there are more Thunderbolts left in Houston than I realized. Here is one at Northline Park, very close to I-45 on Nordling Rd near E Twickenham Trail.






It appears that the service disconnect box was broken into.

This picture shows how much this thing is leaning.


There are two other Thunderbolts that I do not have pictures of. One is on top of the H.P. Carter Carrer Center at Gregg Street and Lyons Avenue http://goo.gl/maps/ORi71. The other is at Hennessay Park at Lyons Avenue and Maury Street http://goo.gl/maps/WzLxX

[Fletch]

Do many of the Houston suburbs have siren systems?

[Travis]

Do many of the Houston suburbs have siren systems?

The areas along the coast on the South side of Houston are littered with refineries. All the refineries have more ATI and Whelen sirens than you could ever hope to see, and some of the communities have siren systems in place to warn of any kind of large-scale emergency associated with living near a refinery. I have seen many Whelen and Federal electronic omni's, as well as P-10's. Some of the smaller towns still have fire sirens at their central fire departments. A few larger suburbs have their own outdoor systems for other emergencies as well.

[TboltTX1]

The South Texas Project Electric Generating Station is located around Matagorda, TX. They have recently upgraded from their P-10s to new ASC T-121s.
LaPorte upgraded from their Whelen 3016s and now have 2900s.
Baytown finally threw out their nonfunctional ATIs and now have Modulators.
Pasadena has whelen 2800s.
I did see a P-10 by a water treatment plant in Webster but I am not sure if it is still in use http://goo.gl/maps/iSqvp.

On the West side of Houston, Katy has four 40V2Ts that they use for tornadoes and other emergencies. They test them every Friday at noon.
Richmond has an STL-10 on their water tower that I don't think is still in use.
Beasly has a model 5 by their old abandoned fire station that they used to sound every Friday at noon, but a limb took out the service line to it and they don't have the money or the need to fix it so they don't use it anymore.
Needville also has a model 5 on their water tower but it stopped working and they probably don't plan on fixing it.

That is all I can think of in terms of community warning sirens. But as SirenkiD said there are so many refineries South of Houston and most of them have their own warning sirens it makes it difficult to keep track of all of them.

[TboltTX1]

Took some pictues of the siren at Henessay Park at Lyons Ave. and Maury St.



Looks like these controls have been broken into as well.








Graffiti








No Whelen Radio












Didn't have enough time to see the one up the road on top of the H.P. Carter Carrer Center. Next time I'm there I'll see if they'll let me on the roof to get some up close pics of it.

[TboltTX1]

Well, I have some unfortunate news. The Henessay Park and Fire Station #22 Tbolts have been removed. I personally drove by the former Henessay Park Tbolt and here is all that I found.



Blower Platform Support Pole




Where the other pole used to be...


I went down to the Logistics Center on Dart St. to shed some light on what happened to this one and I ended up speaking with the General Services manager. He informed me that Parks & Rec most likely removed this one and some of the others. However, he had also contracted the removal of the Thunderbolt at Fire Station #22 (the first siren I posted). Apparenly he just hired a tree removal company to cut the pole down and haul the siren to the scrapper. This was probably the same process that occurred to the other sirens that just dissapeared from under my nose at the other fire stations. He also said that it wouldn't be cost effective for the city to auction them off either, go figure.

However, there is one Thunderbolt that the fire department cannot get their hands on. It sits on the H.P. Carter Carrer Center on Gregg and Lyons St. Since HISD owns the building they tecnically own the siren by default. Here are some pictures I took of it while I was there.











I aksed the office staff if I could take some better pictures from the roof, however no one had roof access. I'll try to schedule an appointment with HISD to get roof access the next time I'm there. Stay tuned.

[buffaloglenn]

More bad news - it appears that HISD or whoever operates the career center has torn it down for a rebuild or sold the property on Lyons st. It's an empty lot right now, and obviously the siren that was on top is gone.

The only one I can seem to find that is still standing in Houston is the one on Nordling Rd at the park.

[TboltTX1]

Well that's unfortunate. I figured this would be the last of them to come down due to the difficulty of removal, but wasn't expecting them to demo the building.

Not that there was any chance of it being saved anyways. I made a good effort at contacting the city and HISD about it. I couldn't get so much as a closer look at it.

I'm surprised that the Nordling Park siren is still standing, I would have thought that Parks and Recreation would have gotten around to that one by now especially considering how much it is leaning.