Does your city have civil defense/fire/air raid sirens or similar systems?

The Netherlands have a siren warning system that's tested every first monday of the month at 12pm and is currently being phased out in favor of governmental alerts(NLAlerts) on phones, which many think is a really stupid idea.

The alerts don't work on a lot of older phones whereas the old sirens can be heard by everyone, everywhere. l'm aware that it's said that only a few people need to have the alert because they can communicate with other people, but what if you're alone somewhere and it doesn't work?

Also, l've heard a lot of cases where they send out the wrong alert to the wrong people, send alerts for mundane things, send an alert five times a day, or send it much later than the incident occured.

In my hometown in Illinois, US, they were tested on the first Tuesday of every month. They are now used as tornado alarms, but I believe they were originally used as an air raid alarms or something like that during the 50s and 60s.

I currently live in China and although they may have such a system in here, I've never heard it tested or anything.

Yes! Absolutely. I live in Honolulu, and we have a whole slew of warning sirens and emergency communication stuff, for tsunamis, eruptions, nuclear missiles, everything really. They were actually dormant up until about a year ago, when they revived the old nuclear sirens because of North Korea tensions. It sounds really retro when they go off on the 1st of every month, which is tomorrow too.

There is nothing like this in New York City that I am aware of, but I know the suburbs to the north of the city (Rockland, Westchester, Duchess, Orange and Putnam Counties) have warning sirens for the nearby Indian Point nuclear power plant. They're tested once or twice a year. The nuclear reactors are supposed to be shutting down by the end of next year so the sirens may be retired after that.

Austria is fully covered by sirens which are typically used for alerting the fire brigade although pagers and other radio systems become more popular. The sirens are tested every Saturday at noon (except for Vienna) and on every first Saturday in October the civil defense alarm signals are tested.

Seattle, USA. We will go blissfully into the night with no warning of attack. At least no warning via siren. We do have the cellular alert system though.

However, in nearby areas there is a siren system in the flood-path of our friendly looming volcano, Mt Rainer.. In case of an eruption there are a few towns directly in the path of the resulting Lahar. It is very similar to systems for tornadoes or tsunamis. Here is a link directly to the system's wiki entry.

edit: a little tidbit from Mt Rainier's wiki entry:

Mt. Rainier is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, and it is on the Decade Volcano list. Because of its large amount of glacial ice, Mt. Rainier could produce massive lahars that could threaten the entire Puyallup River valley. "About 80,000 people and their homes are at risk in Mount Rainier’s lahar-hazard zones

Berkeley and San Francisco still have and test their air raid sirens once a month, though without any sort of culture of preparation or response to them, who knows what good they would do in an emergency.

Where I live now we don't have anything like that (aside from the usual emergency broadcast system via TV/radio, of course). But in the town I grew up in (rural MD), we had an air raid siren that was used by the volunteer fire department to signal them to come to the station. They had a pager system as well, so I'm not sure if the siren was functionally necessary. But to me it was part of the town's charm. All at once the entire town knew something was happening.

My guess would be that in the event of a tornado, the siren would probably be used. Because if you heard that thing going off for more than 30 seconds you'd know something unusual was happening.

It does not, and I have never heard air raid sirens, or of air raid sirens, before seeing the Silent Hill movie sometimes in 2012. I didn't even know that Italy actually had them at all until I checked Wikipedia just now.

During World War II every town had one, and several were present in each large city. Even after the danger of bombings had ended, they were kept in order to provide warning in case of any danger (e.g. high water in Venice).

As of 2015, some of them still survive. For instance, as many as 34 have been located in Rome by crowdsourcing. Up until the 1980s they underwent routine maintenance and sounded at noon.[16]

In addition, the Protezione Civile (Civil Protection) operates sirens to warn the public in case of a threat to the citizen population. Protezione Civile also provides transport needs and military defense for the Government of Italy. These defence systems were put in place in the 1990s and are occasionally still used today.[17]

It's Russia. Of course we have sirens.

Tests used to be annual when I was at school. Haven't heard one in a while. Don't need 'em here: it's quiet and peaceful; no floods, no forest fires, no wild animals.

There's one in Lund, Sweden. It's tested every month, and I believe it's a warning system for chemical explosions. If the alarm goes off you have 15 minutes to get out of the city, or something like that. Not 100% sure.

I live in the greater Seattle metro area, in the US. We used to have sirens all over town during the 80s and early 90s. I remember them testing the sirens every Wednesday at noon. With the fall of the Soviet Union, those all ended up going away.

Nowadays, we have a series of sirens that they installed in the port. We're at high risk for lahars from Mount Rainier, so these sirens are all over in the ports of Seattle & Tacoma, as well as in the Puyallup and Duwamish River valleys. There's something like a million+ people in the direct path of one, so these are a part of the volcano evacuation system. If one goes off, you have (depending on your location) anywhere from 10 to 60 minuets to GTFO.

I don't know about up in the valleys, but in the port areas, the sirens get tested on the first Monday of the month, at noon.

In my part of Colorado some towns have them. Most do not. Though I remember in the ‘90s one very small rural town where I lived in Colorado had a siren that would call when the voluntary fire department was needed. It signaled to the fire fighters, sleeping in their homes, that they were needed and should wake up.

Yep, Auckland has some Tsunami sirens.

https://www.aucklandemergencymanagement.org.nz/useful-information#tsunami-warning-sirens

There probably isn't any other siren and the Civil Defence has been testing the use of mobile based alerts that show up as Presidential Alert on many phones.

I am sure we have them in Istanbul, but I have never heard them tested. I'm having a vague memory of me hearing them go in my childhood, but quite possibly it is some sort of illusion going on in my head.

We are generally safe here, but a construction boom is has eaten up lots of area where earth and fauna was exposed around the city, and now we have serious flooding issues which I think are related to it. There is also the occasional tanker crashing into a seaside villa around Bosphorus. So we don't really have anything that requires sirens except maybe a war, AFAIK.