New Orleans       I can remember from my youth, living in various communities in the West, as well as in Kentucky and New Orleans, when it was not uncommon to hear a siren go off at noon.  It wasn’t a warning, but a notice.  Was it a reminder to eat lunch, take a break, or just a community timekeeper?  I’m curious, now that I bring it up, but I don’t know the answer.  Maybe it was different from place to place.  Where it exists now, it just seems quaint and small town, I guess, but I don’t really know why that is either.

Something like a siren is old school, for sure.  In modern life with the ubiquity of cell phones, the internet, and emerging AI, who needs a long, loud repetitious siren bleating about lunchtime, much less as a warning signal?  Everybody, I would argue, if we can get over our bias against simple tech in order to secure everyone’s safety.

I was reminded of the importance of fighting for warning sirens in reading about the tragic flash floods in Texas hill country which have already killed more than 100 people, many of whom were children.  A Texas legislator from the area vowed that he would renew his demand for warning sirens for imperiled communities, which had been raised in the past, and then shelved.

He’s right.  If water is rising in the middle of the night, why are public authorities assuming people might be looking at their phones?  It’s still not confirmed that a warning was even sent over cellphones.  Furthermore, we’re talking about campers and people in rural areas.  As a people and a community, are we assuming cellphone coverage is pristine and universal all over the country?  Dream on!  Just because we are not talking about the digital divide, despite the fact that the new Trump budget bill is premised on exactly that divide in order to strip lower income families and workers of healthcare and food stamps by taking advantage of huge parts of that populations being functionally techno-peasants, does not mean it is any less real.

ACORN’s affiliate in Louisiana, A Community Voice, has been fighting for several years now with the local and state governments for sirens as a warning system against water rising from hurricanes and similar water events in low lying areas of New Orleans.  The city has a controversial network of 5000 cameras pointed at its citizens along the streets and buildings, so why can’t it put together a network and attach a couple of hundred sirens to warn people and save lives?

Sirens are such a simple, low tech, and relatively cheap warning system that it’s almost unimaginable to me why this isn’t the least cities, towns, counties, and states can’t do to install such an easily accessible solution that would save lives in facing disasters.  Just because sirens are old school, doesn’t mean that they can’t tell the lessons that are lifesaving.