Hear It Now!

In Point Roberts, earlier this month, I was driving west on APA Road and eventually came to Tyee.  And what to my wondering eyes should appear?  Something round and modular and white upon a tall pole.  I couldn’t remember having seen this previously; on the other hand I often don’t notice things.  But it has turned out to be a pole of recent placement.  It is a tsunami warning siren. 

It goes with the signs that don’t exactly lead anywhere.  Well, I suppose they lead to higher ground, but they don’t tell you when you’ve gotten there.  The signs around the peninsula indicate that you should go this way or that way, but when you come to the end of a route, it doesn’t tell you’ve gotten to the place you should be.  If it were me, I’d just keep driving, waiting for the next sign to tell me where to go for the next sign, which would eventually lead to a sign that says, ‘Okay, you can stop now and just stay right here until somebody tells you to move on somewhere else.’.

I’ve seen only one of these siren towers on the Point  (which I’m afraid is going to be more than adequate).  I’ve poked around on the net and have found that there are many kinds of sirens available for this kind of task.  The one we have is a ‘federal signal modulator,’ or at least it looks like the pictures of such sirens.  If you would like to find out what it probably sounds like, here is a youtube of such a siren. Remember not to be wearing earphones when you play it. 

Many places, according to Wikipedia, test their sirens every so often.  In Cannon Beach, Oregon, they have a tsunami siren that they test, but they don’t play the sound of the siren when it is a test; they play, instead, the sound of a mooing cow.  Youtube of that, too, here.  There at Cannon Beach, I guess they are still waiting to here what it really sounds like.  May they hear, forever, only the sound of a mooing cow.