Tell me if this makes sense

[Bama2001]

Today I was hanging out in downtown birmingham on the uab campus and I noticed that a new Whelen was on top of a parking deck on 19th street. It was a WPS 2903. It doesnt make sense to me because on 20th street there is a newer model 2001 on top of the hospital. There like 75 ft. apart. and there is a model 5 on 18th street. What's the deal here? It doesnt make sense

[Brendan Ahern]

Seems to be the popular thing to do in downtowns nowadays. Chicago has a 3 cell modulator exactly 2 blocks away from a 2001. Are all the sirens owned by the city??

[kswx29]

Well, Topeka has a simular thing going on. There used to be a Thunderbolt and 2t22 about 3-4 blocks from each other (Where you could see each of them at the same spot) Anyways, they replaced the 2t22 with a 2001 and left the thunderbolt up. No use of taking down the Thunderbolt until it breaks i guess. But having 2-3 new sirens so close to each other dosn't make since to me.

[Bama2001]

I think UAB probably owns the whelens it's just an educated guess though. Most of the sirens I've found in jefferson county are extremely close to each other 1/4 to 1/2 mile away from each other. I've just never seen any this close together.

[uncommonsense]

Missouri State University in Springfield, MO is very much in the same way. There are two campus owned SD-10's within eye sight of each other on the old part of campus. Go to http://www.missouristate.edu/map/CampusMap.asp and click Southeast Corner and you can sort of get an idea how close they are (this map, to me, does not seem to be to scale, though). There is one on top of the Plaster Student Union and one on top of Hill Hall.

The other situation is Missouri State has a campus owned STH-10 also very near to a city owned 2001. Again, go to the map. The STH-10 is in the southwest corner in the field north of Strong Hall, while the 2001 is across from Bear Park North (in the Northwest map). And really, the SD-10s, STH-10, and 2001 are all within an absurd proximity to each other. I honestly do not feel that the campus map does it justice, but, its the best I can do right now to give you an idea.

[bwillcox]

It is silly duplication of effort but sometimes that's just the way things go with political or semi-political organizations.

Take my alma mater, the University of North Texas. They once had 3 EOWS*612s on campus that were owned by the university. They got pulled out and replaced by 3 T-128s owned and operated by the city of Denton.

The T128s are way less than a mile apart. Makes for a nice loud roar on campus when they fire them up now.

Probably the Whelen is owned by the university and the 2001 is part of the city system.

I would assume that UAB wants the voice capability of the WPS2800 series siren for their campus alerting system. They do that job exceedingly well.

-b-

[Jim_Ferer]

Speculation:

The campus siren may be used for campus security emergencies (think Virginia Tech) or another school-specific warning.

[Matt Hackler]

Here in Muncie the City owned it's 6 T-bolts, 1 SD-10, and 1 Banshee, while Ball State University owned 2 T-bolts, and 1 T-beam. When the county took over siren control Ball State chose to continue operating it's own and replaced it's 3 older ones with 3 Whelen WPS-4004's. When a Tornado warning is issued County dispatch immedietly calls the BSU police and instructs them to activate there's, while also activating the City of Muncie, Yorktown, and Selma (if the tornado is headed for the center part of the county). They both test at 11 every friday County sounds first for 30 sec. followed by BSU for 30 seconds. It's cool when the county does a full min. and they overlap then you know what a warning will sound like. During Severe Weather Week when the mock tornado warning is issued they activate in that protocol but for only 1 min. you hear the county start up and about 10-15 sec. later BSU's fire off.

[AllSafe]

Well, ASC I-Force systems may be a better choice for voice alerting because according to SimplexGrinnell researchers they have the best voice intelligibility of any electronic siren system on the market.