Somerville, Ohio Model 5

[Oldiesmann]

Went on a mini siren hunt up in Butler County today. I started out with the intention of finding the fire station siren that the County EMA's website says is in Collinsville, a small unincorporated community 10 or 15 minutes north of Hamilton.

I had no trouble finding Collinsville, but despite what the county EMA website says, I was unable to find a siren anywhere in that community. Disappointed, and a little annoyed that I'd just driven all the way out there for nothing, I decided to continue up US-127 to see what else I could find. Shortly thereafter, I saw a sign saying Somerville was a mile away. This reminded me that the county EMA website also lists a fire siren in Somerville, so I decided to go see what I could find there.

This lead me to the discovery of my first water-tower-mounted siren...

[hobbeekid]

Are you sure that's a siren? it looks to be some kind of vent for the top of the water tower.Most water towers have some kind of ventilation on top to keep the pressures equal within the tank.....

[holler]

Looks almost like an SD-10. It's slightly off center of the tank also, which is odd.

[thunderbolt69]

That looks more like a vent to equalize pressure. Could you get any closer?

[ginbot86]

I thought it was and SD-10 as well. If it's a vent, that's a pretty darn big vent!

[Oldiesmann]

The tower's location and height made it difficult for me to get a good picture, especially with my camera only having 4x optical zoom. That was about the best I could do (I drove by the tower several times trying to find a good angle before giving up and snapping it through the windshield).

Everything I can see about the site points to it being a siren. There's an antenna mounted up there (look closely at the "black dot" in the photo), and Google Maps in Street View shows a large electrical box mounted on the side of the tower:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 3,,0,-4.01

[Charlie Davidson]

Everything I can see about the site points to it being a siren. There's an antenna mounted up there (look closely at the "black dot" in the photo), and Google Maps in Street View shows a large electrical box mounted on the side of the tower:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 3,,0,-4.01

That electrical box could also be for the tower's water pump as well.

If its a siren, then it looks more like an SD-10 to me.

[Oldiesmann]

I've put the photo on Photobucket so you can see the original size, which gives more detail.

http://s832.photobucket.com/albums/zz24 ... G_0397.jpg

I will email the Butler County EMA in the morning to confirm the location of that siren, and will ask them about the one in Collinsville as well.

[SouthDakotaBoy2009]

well I looked it full sized & it still looks like an vent to me, you need to go back there & take a closer shot, then we'll know 1000000% of what it is.

[Oldiesmann]

I'll email the Butler County EMA to see if I can get confirmation on the location of that siren. With Somerville being nearly an hour drive from here (due to US-127 being 25mph or 35mph most of the way), I don't have any plans to go up there again anytime soon, and I don't know if I could get a better picture even if I do go back.