Photo courtesy of astro.umd.edu
After months of bleak winter, the sounds of spring are in the air at last. Walking between classes, students can hear the chatter of squirrels, the chirping of birds, and on certain Wednesdays, a deafening, wailing alarm sounding like something out of a war movie.
An oft-ignored, little-understood phenomenon among students, this discordant shriek is the song of the university’s tornado sirens. Perched atop the Benjamin Building, Computer and Space Science Building and the Service Building on Route 1, the three sirens are positioned so they can warn students and faculty anywhere on the campus of imminent danger.
The university installed the sirens as an emergency alert system after a tornado tore through the campus in September 2001, shredding buildings and killing two students. In lieu of a disaster, students will only hear the sirens when police test them around noon the first Wednesday of each month. The tone varies from a quick rise and fall to a full ringing blast.
University Police Capt. Mueck said the test tone only sounds for 15 to 20 seconds while police check the computer to make sure the system is working.
“If it’s a real emergency it’ll go for, like, three minutes,” he said. “That’s a long time. If you hear that, you need to get inside.”
In their 12 years of service, the sirens have been set off twice for emergencies, both times for “impending weather events,” Mueck said.
Mueck can clearly recall the last time the police set off the sirens during a severe storm in 2011.
“I was actually on my way home, and I was gassing up my car at the Exxon on Route 1, right across from University View,” Mueck said. “I gotta tell you, it was absolutely eerie … to see these black clouds just rolling across College Park and realize, ‘Oh my God, this could be the real deal.”
Fortunately, neither that threat nor the earlier one materialized.
How does it work? University Police receive campus-specific weather information and alerts from the WeatherData service. When a warning call comes in, it falls to Mueck, Technology Services head Maj. Marc Limansky or University Police Chief David Mitchell to order the sirens activated. Police dispatchers use a computer in the Service Building to turn on the sirens and send out alerts by text and email.
The sirens would also be used in a situation such as a chemical spill near the campus, and in such cases, police and fire officials would decide whether the sirens should be used.
However, many students said they are uncertain as to what the sirens are for and what to do if they go off.
“I would guess we would find a secure location,” Kahlil Chan, a freshman enrolled in letters in sciences, said. “However, I’m not sure … if they would advise us to go inside or into a certain building.”
Christy Tirrell-Corbin, who directs the early childhood education department, works at an office in the Benjamin Building. She said if the siren on the roof signals an alarm, she’ll look to her computer or the Office of Student Services down the hall for specific information.
“I was here when the tornado hit, and we didn’t know what was happening,” she said. “I was teaching a class in the basement and didn’t even know there had been anything until the class was over and I came upstairs. So I think having a siren and a warning system is really important.”
Police are also working with the Department of Resident Life’s Information Technology to develop an app to be called SOS to give students more specific information in cases of emergency.
“The last time they used [the sirens], people knew exactly what to do,” Mueck said. “My impression is that it’ll at least be 50-50, and that half the population that knows what to do will inform the others. … But hopefully when we get this app, people will be able to download it and it’ll give the information they need.”
