Thank you for making this video! As a Long Beach native, I have also photo-documented and mapped all the sirens I am aware of in the Long Beach/San Pedro area. I was saddened by the loss of the SD-10 on Clark. A friend and I immediately after its removal tried to track it down in an effort to rescue it via the city, but we got lost in the bureaucracy. As time moves forward we should work to preserve these sirens as the city of Los Angeles has done with theirs. All LA City sirens are in the register of historical landmarks and cannot be removed. The one at the Recreation Park 18 Golf Course, which happens to be where I work, is in excellent condition! We have access to the control box as well.
@@SurrealAdventure I believe you also happened to miss the one on the corner of Kildee and Ocana in Central Long Beach, next to Marshall Middle school. It's also in very excellent condition, in fact hooked up to the power grid too.
Frank Wells damn. I had to manually go through google street view and find these, it was like a month of my spare time. Most of them are near schools, but not all. I recently hiked to the peak of cerro negro? I think, to get video for the channel of the last Chrysler air raid siren I know of in the wild, when I got there, it had already Been pulled out, and replaced with telecom equipment!
What a bummer. Definitely interested in working to propose something to the city. The least they could do is protect them as historical objects. It would be cool to preserve one fully functional for demonstration. Shoot me a message if you’d be interested, I definitely am. Definitely worth a shot.
Back in the early 80s an underground vault in the city of Anaheim Ca got flooded from a big rainstorm and all their Thunderbolt sirens went off at 3am, it scared the crap out of a lot of people
Nothing is infallible. In 2018, Hawaii sent out an emergency alert "Ballistic Missile Threat Inbound To Hawaii. Seek Immediate Shelter, This Is Not A Drill." One poor guy read it and had a heart attack and died.
such an eerie sound, i too am old enough to remember them. still gives me the willys just hearing them again on here. last i remember hearing them was a test of san onofres system
When I went to H.B. to record the last scene for this video, and heard their siren system, I couldn't believe it sounded exactly like what I remembered from childhood. The echoing, and the sirens off in the distance was surreal! After I was done recording, I was a little bit sad that I wasn't using a camera that recorded stereo, it had sounded so cool.
My home town of Port Alberni had a single long standing Canadian built CLM siren similar to the British Carter 10/12 twin rotor with a large front horn and air scoop shaped rear horn on a directional rotator originally installed in 1962 and was decommissioned at the end of the 80’s and removed sometime in the 90’s I was fascinated by it as a kid growing up but I never remembered it ever being powered up.
I remember in the late 1960’s having a summer job near Anaheim St and Santa Fe Ave (west Long Beach) and it must have been a Chrysler siren. (It was a lower pitch single note sound). I was inside a building with a corrugated steel roof on wood framing and in addition to the siren sound I could hear (and feel) the building rattling like it was about to disintegrate. My ears were still still ringing and sore for the next hour or more.
Thank you. I might have missed one or two, but I got most of the ones left in Long Beach. There is a list on a siren site of the remaining sirens in Los Angeles: www.wirechief.com/sirens/ Thanks for watching, please give the video a like and subscribe for more offbeat stuff!
It went off because the guy just tried to set if off as a joke like he said. But it think the speakers failed and it stopped just after the tone start.
I find this to be very intriguing. I’ve always had an interest in sirens, but where I come from, in Milwaukee, they’re called tornado sirens. Milwaukee had a Civil Defense siren system with air raid sirens. A lot of the system was Biersach & Niedermeyer (B&N) Mobil-Directos’. If you’ve never seen one, they look like lob sided toilets. I believe most were gas powered by 25hp air cooled engines initially, but were converted to electric later on. Milwaukee slowly updated their CD system starting in the 70s and almost all of the Mobil Directos’ were phased out for new sirens (one still stands in the north side and sounds for monthly tests :) ). One of the most prominent replacement sirens was the ACA P-50 (ACA was a division of B&N, and later became ASC). It is a massive rotating siren that is one of the loudest in the world, and is only a few decibels shy of the Chrysler sirens. When the 90s began to roll in, the CD system, unlike LA and LB, was repurposed as a peacetime system for tornadoes and other emergencies (I.E. tornado sirens). The system continues to be maintained and updated here and there, with new peacetime sirens being added (such as the ASC T-128 in the video, and the Federal Signal 2001). It’s easy to tell the storm sirens from the CD sirens as only the CD sirens wear yellow paint. My point in this whole ramble is that it’s ultra intriguing to me that these systems is southern Cali were just... abandoned, disconnected, and left to rot where they stood. A testament of time that most don’t even notice. The most intriguing aspect is that the system was maintained, but never updated, all of the sirens in the system are original. I believe this is why it was abandoned by the municipalities, because they were in need of replacement soon and none had been replaced which was too costly, so the cities just abandoned them. There is a few examples of this in Milwaukee where a siren was no longer needed and was left there, but never on a scale of this size. The other aspect of this system that gives me Cold War vibes is that all of the pole mounted sirens have baskets on the pole to work on the sirens. The baskets on siren poles are nonexistent today, and you only see them on Cold War era air raid sirens like these ones. Thanks for the video. I recommend you take a look at the Mobil-Directo, and the P-50. Both are spectacular sirens.
Shane Aykroid I will, thank you. I recently hiked to a peek in La Cañada Flintridge, I believe Cerro Negro, on top of it was supposed to be the last Chrysler air raid siren in the wild. When I finally reached the peak, and the fire lookout it was under, I found that I had just missed it it had been pulled out and Telcom equipment put in its place. It would have made a good video.
The sirens actually have been decommissioned in 1985. These were tied into LAs system ,so since LA decommissioned the sirens in 1985 ,these were as well.
I read that as well, and you may be correct, I was unable to find any clear answer about Long Beach. I was basing this on the Press Telegram: www.presstelegram.com/2011/02/20/cold-war-air-raid-siren-wails-in-memory/
I worked for GTE in the 70’s and I worked on these. They were tested I believe the last Thursday of the every month. You did not want to stand below one because when it went off the Pigeon shit would go flying.
Angelino native here. We remember these well: thank you profusely for documenting a pivotal sound of our childhood in the 1960s, They were the unseen reminders of a nuclear world--this is my first glimpse of what compelled us to dive under our school desks, duck and cover! Never saw them in action, until this video.
Thanks for watching until the end. The rusted ones featured here, are the same ones that were in use from 1945 until ~1990ish when they were abandoned.
I remember the the terrible sound. I was a kid and sound terrified me. Although I knew it was a practice, just the idea that it was a warning of a possible nuclear attack was terrifying for a little boy. It was all for nothing.
Not that I'm aware of. It's just something I heard, then I was like, wait a minute, that's an air raid siren, and I haven't heard one in at least 14 years, then I saw the candle balloons. I think it was someone's elaborate prank. I would love to know if it made the news...
Interesting. I grew up in Long Beach, but was unfortunately born a few years too late to get to experience the monthly tests of these going off. (Born in '95) I honestly had no idea that we even had sirens in Long Beach. It's a shame they were just left to rust and decay, I wish they had been preserved and kept up as historical landmarks. It's really sad to see them this way and says a lot about how little we care about preserving our history when things like this are left to rot and buildings are torn down without a second though about their historical value. I wish I could have seen them in person years ago when I lived in Ling Beach. Now I live in the Midwest and we do have siren tests monthly here, although I'm not sure if they are cold war era like these. (Wouldn't know where to look for them/that info.) I think I would've enjoyed hearing these go off as kid/teenager.
It was a really eerie experience. Most o them were the same model, so they made the same sound, it would go up and down over and over (similar to the siren at the end of the video). You could hear several of them at once, some were farther away...Sometimes, they would hit their top notes at the same time, and you could hear this weird oscillation sound as they overlapped in the air. I guess if the sirens went off outside of the scheduled test, it was nuclear war. We practiced getting under our desks during these ridiculous nuclear attack drills (as if the desks would somehow save us).
Although they are over 50 years old, they should be temporarily removed for restoration process and should be tested every month because these sirens will also be enough to warn people of wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, etc.
I used to live in Long Beach (grew up and once again live in Pico Rivera 20 miles away) and do remember spotting some of the sirens while driving here and there in LB. Being 56 years old I do vividly remember the sirens being tested from time to time. And if the sirens ever went off unscheduled, everybody in my elementary school had to “duck and cover” getting under our desk to “shield us” from the atomic blasts. That thankfully never came, but the sirens scared us all for life. I am strangely drawn to the sound though. There is something oddly soothing about them to me. Maybe that is why I absolutely love industrial, techno, rave, noisy as all hell music. I dunno? I recently had an MRI done and was really truly loving the noise! It was just like being at a rave. Errrrrrr Errrrrrr Errrrrrr!!! Clank Clank Clank!!! Music to my ears. I was bummed when the MRI was completed :-( Something else that has always stuck with me is from the original 1960 version of The Time Machine. How the air raid siren is used to lure the Eloi into the underground cavern via those huge futuristic buildings with alien faces on them. These big spiked horns protrude from the base of the structure and away the sirens go! Luring the Eloi through those alien faces. Absolutely blew my mind as a kid and I’m am certain is a reason I love brutalist artwork today. Because brutalist is basically a reflection of what happens after the bomb is dropped. Charred remains everywhere in dripping molten nothingness. That just reminded me. The 2nd Planet of The Apes movie where they go underground. Another mind blown moment with brutalist everywhere. The first Planet of the Apes too was huge! Anyway ... air raid sirens. I know a guy my age who cannot stand the sound. Then again he doesn’t like the same music as me either so ... there you go. That guy actually lives in LB still. And I’m sure he is glad they don’t test the things anymore :-) And I’m not sure I would welcome them either because they really do send shivers through you. Awesome video. Thanks :-)
Glad you enjoyed. Also one of my favorite movies, just not the remake! I hope you watched it until the end, I filmed a siren test in Huntington Beach (they still have their siren systems).
I was 11 years old in 1969 and they had the sirens in Anaheim. They always went off while we were in class not outside and we would hide under our desks. After 1970 I never really heard those sirens again. They sounded really cool, like a useless science fiction scenario in the modern age.
The one on Clark St., over in Lakewood was pulled out just after I made this video. The one behind the gas station off long beach blvd is likely to be pulled out soon, LaserFiche just built a large building, and might be using the alley.
@@SurrealAdventure ik I couldn't see all of them. Just saw some others including the one that got hotwired Plus it might be pulled out soon. Sad to see them gone! here is the link to see me revisit some of them! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MWhl9Tzb3xc.html
I wish the Cold War sirens could be restored. They could be repurposed for tornados or other civil threats. Or a special collector’s siren that can be used for some other thing, seeing these rust away makes me sad.
yeah, it's strange. When I was making this, I was near a gas station filming, and a young guy asked me what I was doing. I explained to him what it was and what they were for, and his eyes got real big, he couldn't believe that something like these actually existed and were used at one point.
Interesting. I haven't really heard of any other place that had Scream Masters, as the company that made them didn't seem to be around for very long. Thanks for watching! Please give the video a like and subscribe for more offbeat stuff!
@@SurrealAdventure of course! I went to see the rusted out model 5 today. The power meter is at least 1998 or newer. Weird because testing stopped in 1991.
5:13 whats the type of the siren I know its a air raid but It's like close to my house and it never sounded...pls tell me what type it is and what time it begins?
It’s a “Scream Master” civil defense siren. It was likely installed sometime in the early 1940’s after WWII started. It was tested the last Thursday of every month around 10:30am until the last tests ~1991. It is abandoned.
Scream Master was a Siren Manufacturer in the Early 50's to 60's. There sirens came in 6/8 Ports (Dual Toned), or 9 Ports (Single Tone). They sold only in California. They were a success! I heard that they did not meet most expectations from other counties from what I've seen! They went Bankrupt do to that, and not F&S Beating them. Scream Master was from La Verne, CA. There sirens were mounted on poles that are probably 26FT or 30 FT. The only recording of a Scream Master is in Sacramento that is 9 Ports. No 6/8 Port Scream Masters have been recorded so far. Another Scream Master was set off in December 31st, 2004. It was 6/8 Ports, there has been no recordings of the Siren Hotwiring done by the teenagers. I may try to find News recordings from 2004 to find the 6/8 Scream Master going off!
95% of chances they will not give you the siren, because of one thing : Someone have already refurbished one and start to set it off whenever they want and since that many cities won't let peoples get them But you can still try to contact them I bet they are gonna say what the heck are you talking about lmao they don't know if the sirens exists or not, they are just "there"
update on the SD-10, after checking the california siren map and google street view on clark ave and conant st, i can confirm that this siren was removed, what remains is a patch of dirt, and thats it.
Yeah, looks like I was lucky, I filmed it about 2 weeks before it was removed. Thanks for watching! Please give the video a like an subscribe for more offbeat stuff!
Sirens are not only more reliable than phones, but they add more protection. Some people don't have phones, others have them on silent. Emergency Outdoor Warning Sirens save lives.
Honey Subs oh, I didn’t know. I’ll have to check it out. Thanks. My Instagram account was hacked some time ago, and then banned, it’s so much trouble to get it back, I gave up on it.
I heard sirens go off on a regular basis growing up in Garden Grove, in Orange County. Does anyone know if OC had sirens farther inland? Or were we hearing coastal sirens that far inland?
@@HollyVee OC had some sirens by the shore for San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant. They are removed as of 2022. Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach are the only active sirens by the shore. The Inactive ones are in Seal Beach, and Sunset Beach! OC had some inland!
I've been past most of them recently. Not much has changed. The one on Clark street, I think it was the sd-11 was pulled out about 2 weeks after I made this video. The rest are still just there, rusting. I tried to make another air raid siren video by hiking to a peak up in chino hills that still had a Chrysler Hemi Air Raid Siren, but it was gone too. There is still a couple of Chrysler air raid sirens in the wild, at some point probably this summer, I'm going to try and find one and document it. Thanks for watching, please subscribe!
Maybe in some places, and there are a lot of places out there that still have siren systems, but the Long Beach sirens have been disconnected since at least 1991.
These are all over Las Angeles area. There's a site that has their locations and types. I don't know why people don't take them. They're just going to end up in a junk yard. If you live near one, go take and restore it. The city doesn't care because they can't afford to deal with them. Take them while you can. If I lived in that area, I'd be all over it. Replaced by a system that's destined to fail. Too much reliance on cellphone infrastructure. It's a freaking house of cards There needs to be layered systems, just like security systems.
It worked well enough. After that, I think the city came out and disabled the electrical to it. Thanks for watching, please give the video a like and subscribe for more offbeat stuff!
Yes, I'm in my 40's so I grew up listening to the tests. If memory serves, they were the last Thursday of every month at 10:30 am. It sounded the same as all the other sirens in Long Beach. I think they intentionally only used ones that made the same sound. Basically the same as the siren at the end of the video.
Unfortunately, the sirens in the cities of San Juan Capistrano, Dana Point, and San Clemente are apart of the now decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) community alert siren system. They haven’t been tested since October 2014, and have been deactivated this past June, and are now awaiting to be removed. Stupid of the cities with the sirens didn’t decide to just keep them active after SONGS decommissioned, and just use them for other emergencies like tsunamis and wildfires like Huntington and Newport Beach. Their system consists of 50 Whelen WPS 2810s and 2806s. They replaced unique custom engineered sirens designed by the plant called the Model 120, and Federal Signal STL-10Bs in November 2005. I’m sad to see all the SONGS sirens go since we have a timeshare down in Dana Point, and every year we go down to it, I would always see the sirens, and the old ones when I was really little. Their system is the one that got me into sirens In the first place, so seeing them go, is hard to deal with. I have a tribute video of SONGS’s system on my RU-vid channel of me going to 39 out of the 50 sirens, I could only go to 39 since 11 are on Camp Pendleton which is obviously restricted. But it’s a very stupid move of the cities to decide to remove them, instead of just taking over them from SONGS.
Duderocks5539 It’s really stupid I think to not have these, not everybody is watching TV or has a phone on them and not everybody that has a phone has push notifications enabled. The last tsunami to hit California hit in 1964 and killed 11 people mostly because it hit a sparsely populated area, can you imagine what would result if that happened today, and hit a larger portion of the coast?
+Surreal Adventure I agree with you 100%. The cities around SONGS are the ones that decided to remove them, which really pisses me off since they have plenty of other uses. After SONGS said they would no longer be responsible for maintaining the sirens after June 31st, they gave the cities the option to keep them and use them for other emergencies such as tsunamis, but surprise surprise, the cities in the EPZ decided not to. Big deal if they aren’t useful for SONGS anymore due to being decommissioned, they still have plenty of other uses, but the dumbass cities don’t realize that. And I’m also really mad since I grew up seeing the sirens in the SONGS EPZ including their old sirens back as far as I can remember in around 2004 before they were replaced with the Whelens in November 200. We have a timeshare down in Dana Point, and I’d see them every year we go down to our condo. SONGS’s system was the first siren system I’ve ever saw, and is also the one that got me into sirens, so I have a very strong connection with it, and plus their old system was unique and not like any other nuclear power plant system, or siren system in general. It consisted of the custom engineered by the plant Model 120 pneumatic sirens (known as the “Toshiba” siren incorrectly), and STL-10Bs, but those were replaced by the current Whelen 2810s and 2806s in November 2005, but they were just bolted to the original poles. But now, the Whelens are being removed. The removal progress is supposed to start next week 12-9-19 and end supposedly on 12-31-19. It angers me even just thinking about it 😡
+Surreal Adventure I actually own a Model 120 that I got from the designer of them. Mine wasn’t actually installed like the others, but is exactly the same, I just have to get the horns, frame structure and motor for the blower for it, and it will be complete. The ones that were installed were scrapped after the Whelens replaced them, along with the STL-10s. But when I got mine from the designer of them, I also got tons of pictures and even pics of the prototypes, as well as a ton of installation blueprints for different locations in the SONGS system. I have plenty of videos of it on my RU-vid channel, as well as a whole wiki article on them that can be found here: wiki.airraidsirens.net/Model_120 I know the Model 120s are much cooler then the Whelens, but I don’t want the Whelens to be removed. I don’t want their to be no sirens down their.
+Surreal Adventure Yeah, I’m really sad that basically only 17 out of the 50 sirens will remain by the end of the month. Most of my favorite sirens in their system were in San Clemente, since some were mounted on high hills overlooking everything. And at one point, their system was the most unique NPP system in the world due to the Model 120s being custom made by the plant, and outperformed the STL-10s that were also in the system. You should do a video about their system. But it’s stupid that some of the cities decided not to keep them. 3 out of the 5 jurisdictions with sirens (San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente and a state park south of the plant) are removing theirs. San Juan Capistrano has 10, San Clemente has 19, and the state park has 3, which means a total of 32 out of the 50 sirens are being removed. The only jurisdictions keeping theirs is Dana Point, and MCAS Camp Pendleton. Dana Point has 8 sirens, but is removing one, and Camp Pendleton has 10. Meaning the total remaining ex SONGS sirens will be 17. But the cities that are removing theirs should’ve not pulled a stupid ass move and remove them. Only two jurisdictions realize they’re important, and are useful for other emergencies that aren’t for SONGS. Well technically it’s one since the ones on Camp Pendleton aren’t near the water, and theirs are being tied in with their siren system.
Interesting. It apparently was a small company that was only around for a short time, I've never seen another scream master outside of Long Beach, Ca. thanks for sharing!
Really? I found a couple that were still connected to power, and one that had a new meter in the box, but the controls were not connected anymore. The whole system used to be run by the sheriffs dept. the last actual test I know of was in 1991…
Yeah, that was pretty cool. My only regret was that I couldn't record it in stereo, but it's still good. Thanks for watching! Please give the video al like and subscribe for more adventures!
@@Andrewtatesbiggestfan most of them were supplied power via power cables that ran into the ground, the conduits are still there, but who knows if the wires inside were cut years ago. One of them (the model 5 on the platform in the park) still had a power meter, and it was one of our newer meters, and was displaying a number, which means it had power, but the siren on top was in really bad shape...
Yeah, I think that having them as a backup is a pretty good idea, in areas where they might be useful. Thanks for watching! Please give the video a like and subscribe for more offbeat stuff!
When I was getting photos of the one at the beginning, I was standing in a gas station, and a young man noticed what I was doing, and asked "Hey, what is that thing?" I explained what it was, and he looked amazed.
By the way you think the other sound masters are still out there or its just this one it would be rare to hear a sound master testing i think they did because when i went to see they replaced the control box with new ones so i think they tested it
@@Kerk.714 There were a lot of them in Long Beach. In the video, there are 3 that I found. They were operated by the sheriffs dept and tested monthly up until around 1992, after that they were abandoned in place, left to rust along with the rest of the system. Watch the whole video, I recorded a siren test in H.B. at the end.
Because there really isn’t any good way to detect earthquakes before they happen. When they happen, the energy moves through the earth so quickly, that by the time you’ve sent out the alert, the shaking has already started.
There are still quite a few around, for different purposes. The Midwest still has them for tornado and weather. There is a mountain town in California “Big Bear” that has them for wildfires.
@@comradedyatlov4143 the refineries in Torrance have some, they are more electronic sounding. There are active ones in Huntington Beach they test (like at the end of my video) you might be hearing one of those. They have one right on the border of PCH and Warner, above the fire station.
Most of them were placed near schools. Some were placed in parks or areas where people congregate. I actually didn't find any in the very wealthy neighborhoods, but it could be because civic improvements get more money there for things like poles, curbs, etc. Thanks for watching! Please give the video a like, and subscribe for more offbeat stuff!
Thanks for the feedback. There was a company in Lavern, Ca. that manufactured the "Scream-Master" for a very short period of time in the 1950's. California, and Long Beach in particular bought a lot of them. I'm not sure they were in business for very long, and almost nothing is available online except this post in the siren forums: www.airraidsirens.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19871
@@progenlol Scream Master was a Siren Manufacturer in the Early 50's to 60's. There sirens came in 6/8 Ports (Dual Toned), or 9 Ports (Single Tone). They sold only in California. They were a success! I heard that they did not meet most expectations from other counties from what I've seen! They went Bankrupt do to that, and not F&S Beating them. Scream Master was from La Verne, CA. There sirens were mounted on poles that are probably 26FT or 30 FT. The only recording of a Scream Master is in Sacramento that is 9 Ports. No 6/8 Port Scream Masters have been recorded so far. Another Scream Master was set off in December 31st, 2004. It was 6/8 Ports, there has been no recordings of the Siren Hotwiring done by the teenagers. I may try to find News recordings from 2004 to find the 6/8 Scream Master going off!