Fri Jun 29, 2007 12:50 am
No, it was definately a mistake. I work as a firefighter-paramedic in St. Louis County and was at a hospital typing out an ambulance report on our laptop after a call and called our dispatcher for times. She asked me what the weather was like (the dispatch center has no windows) and I told her it was a little overcast but not raining. She said she was receiveing several phone calls from citizens asking why the sirens were going off. I told her that the sirens weren't going off where we were at (southern St. Louis County), but that maybe there was a Tornado Warning in an ajacent county, as it is St. Louis County EMA's policy is to activate the sirens in St. Louis County, if that was the case.
I told my partner about it and he even remarked that it wasn't the first Monday of the month. Although, the ironic thing is is that it was 11 o'clock when the sirens were going off in parts of the county, and 11 o'clock is test time on the first Monday of the month.
A few minutes later dispatch set off the all-call and alerted everyone that the siren activation was a mistake.
This is the third time in the past few months that there have been accidental activations in various parts of St. Louis County's siren system. Don't know what's going on but the public will soon grow weary if this keeps happening.