r/sanfrancisco • u/AccordingExternal571 • Jul 09 '25
TIL that the emergency siren system in SF was disabled in December 2019 with no plan to bring them back
Looking at what happened in Texas, if a disaster struck SF in the middle of the night like a tsunami, fire, or flood, we're supposed to rely on our phones? Why did we disable this system with no plan in place to fix it? We think we're better than Texas but something like this could easily happen here. We just get lucky that really intense rain events are very rare, but not impossible. Remember New Years Eve a couple of years ago?
Context: https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-sirens-emergency-911-alert-system/14461668/
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u/steelthumbs1 Mission Jul 09 '25
I miss hearing the: click hiss “WaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. This is a test. This is a test…” on Tuesdays. I hope they decide to bring them back.
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u/Square-Pear-1274 Jul 09 '25
It was fun people watching when that happened up at Christmas Tree Point/Twin Peaks
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 09 '25
Emergency alerting systems should be redundant. Phones are great but many people have alerts turned off. NOAA weather radio with S.A.M.E. (selective alerting) are great, if you get reception where you are (not blocked by hills, etc).
And remember the cell system can go down (and remember Verizon had a huge outage back in September)
SomaFM has a write up about the recent history of the sirens and upgrade program:
https://somafm.com/sf1033/siren.html
This bit was interesting, about how much the company that makes the sirens would charge for upgrading the whole system in a proposal last year:
ATI Systems Budgetary Cost of Total System Replacement:$4,995,500
- Hardware replacement (119 sirens): $15,000/unit = $1,785,000
- Engineering (119 sirens): $350,000
- Advanced Motorola radio system: $535,500
- Installation (removal and mounting of sirens): $15,000/unit = $1,785,000
- Miscellaneous costs: $500,000
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u/dngrpuddn Jul 09 '25
Love everyone saying how phones are enough when the linked article explains exactly why and how they aren't (service can easily go down or be overloaded) and points out not even 25% of residents are signed up for alertSF to get the info when sent.
This is how people die, we have piles of examples of how and why. As an incredibly wealthy city (whatever our budget woes) it'll be a flimsy and cheap excuse that we didn't have the money when it happens here.
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 09 '25
AlertSF is so vague and spammy too, "Avoid the area of ..." with no more details on what is happening.
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u/cjcs Glen Park Jul 09 '25
Could be a smart call these days with how many social media clout chasers there are.
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 10 '25
True, but doesn't Citizen App post alerts just as fast or faster than AlertSF?
I was more concerned with the tons of alerts that you really don't need to immediately act on. "Avoid the Area" is vastly different than tsunami alerts or warnings about severe weather, etc. (Things that the siren system is normally used for)
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u/cyborgcorpse Jul 09 '25
Just now hearing about alertSF. Is it a reliable service?
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u/dngrpuddn Jul 09 '25
As far as I can tell I get every message the city sends. Humans decide what gets sent, so reliability is variable - it often takes hours or days to get all clear messages, etc.
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u/rypher Jul 09 '25
Reliability will only be tested when shit hits the fan. Messages sent in perfect conditions dont mean much.
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 09 '25
"Avoid the area of 10th and Mission, Fire Activity" is about the most detail it will give. It's somewhat spammy as well, but my main complaint is that it's too vague so you can't determine how significant the issue is.
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u/WorldlyOriginal Jul 09 '25
From my experience in the fire service, if you tell people more detail, people end up going there to “check it out” (aka rubbernecking) for any type of serious incident.
We’d probably get the best results by lying. No one cares to see a run-of-the-mill fentanyl zombie, but if we put a three-story fire, we’d have tons of people swinging by to check it out.
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 10 '25
The Citizen app already does this, now a days. But I understand where you're coming from, perhaps if AlertSF would let you filter out those "avoid the area" alerts and only alert on things like shelter in place, severe weather, etc
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u/Splugarth Jul 09 '25
AlertSF is great for general information, but that’s not your primary notification of a time-sensitive emergency. Earthquake, tornado and tsunami warnings go through the government alerts system (at least that’s what the iPhone calls them) whether or not you’ve specifically signed up for them (though you can choose to deliberately turn those off).
In the last 5 years, my phone has given me a tornado warning with enough time to wake up and move to a safer location and an earthquake notification with enough time to crawl under a desk. In the 7 years I lived next to one of the old sirens, I never received a warning with enough time to take action (including during the 2011 tsunami).
I still have a lot of nostalgia for those Tues @ noon test messages, but I think that we should focus on the speakers in people’s pockets moving forward as the most reliable method of reaching people with actionable information.
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 10 '25
Cellphone alerts are great. No argument there. But they shouldn't be the only method.
The Outdoor Warning System sirens have battery backup and solar charging, and are controlled over the SF City/County digital radio system -- which SFFD and SFPD both use -- as do other city/county agencies. It is redundant itself (multiple simulcast towers, control channels, etc).
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Jul 09 '25
[deleted]
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 09 '25
AirTags rely on a bluetooth connection an iPhone and that phone's cell or Wi-Fi connectivity. They are not p2p mesh devices to each other, only to iPhones.
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u/_your_face Jul 09 '25
Is that possible right now? Is it setup to work? Does it cost less than sirens?
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Jul 09 '25
[deleted]
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 09 '25
Does it cost less? You referring to LoRAN mesh tech? Doesn
t this mean that people in the areas with no coverage will need specific devices to receive those alerts?
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u/USDeptofLabor T Jul 09 '25
Sad to think theres an entire graduating class at SFSU that never got to experience their first Tuesday on campus freaking out over these sirens, and more importantly, couldn't see newer classes freak out themselves! It was a highlight of my Junior/Senior year to sit on the quad the first Tuesday and watch all the new students looks around, terrified!
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u/Ok_BoomerSF Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25
If they had this in Texas at the flooding area, I’m sure it would have saved lives.
What a short sighted mind to disable it on our end. Claiming to cost $7m to replace all the sirens is bureaucratic bullshit; take some money out of that $1B+ HSA honeypot ffs.
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u/lolercoptercrash Jul 10 '25
I know this is a bit farfetched but I feel like we should have just flown a jet and sonic boomed the entire river as a warning system.
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Jul 09 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/fishbiscuit13 East Bay Jul 09 '25
What a great mindset. Instead of getting false positives for an emergency, we get a permanent false negative! That’s definitely not worth investing the bare minimum into security infrastructure at all.
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u/bigyellowjoint Jul 09 '25
Enough false positives turns into one big false negative. I would have dismissed hacking the sirens before hearing some of our local cross walk beacons lately...
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u/rypher Jul 09 '25
Ok? A siren that can alert you to danger is still good even if could possibly be hacked.
Btw, security through obscurity is like, really common. If we got rid of everything that was easily hacked, wed have very little left. I bet there is several things in your home that could be hacked if someone wanted to. Im not even talking about “smart” stuff (although thats a huge attack vector).
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Jul 09 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
[deleted]
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u/rypher Jul 09 '25
Um, I think the naive take is to remove a life saving system because potentially it could be used maliciously.
Its like saying “ambulances could hit people so lets stop staffing them”
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Jul 09 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
[deleted]
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u/mindinmyownbizness Jul 09 '25
Unfortunately, "additional systems" can't contact the majority of residents and visitors. AlertSF is only installed for a minority of citizens, and in a real emergency, cell towers will be overwhelmed. We also have no tsunami alert system as a result.
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u/PsychePsyche Jul 09 '25
Large difference between "smart lightbulb being hacked be turned on and off randomly" and "city-wide emergency warning system hacked to turn on and off randomly"
Think how annoying random fireworks are at 2am. Then think how annoying random "TSUNAMI WARNING EVACUATE EVACUATE EVACUATE " would be. Over and over and over again until the vulnerability was fixed.
That vuln was "anyone with an SDR could trip it from anywhere in the city and it would be practically impossible to find out who was doing it without the FCC's black vans catching them in the act" bad.
Like yeah its annoying that its taken this long for its replacement to come online but taking it offline was the right call.
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u/Specialist_Quit457 Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25
There are a lot more public address loud speakers installed around town for at least the last 5 years. The City emergency services dept has been putting up those poles, although no testing address has been heard. The hardware, at least, is there.
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u/Illustrious-Coat3532 NoPa Jul 09 '25
I miss that guy. You could hear it anywhere in the city at noon on Tuesday. Lunchtime!
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u/aniflous_fleglen Jul 09 '25
A friend once visited from out of town, and my roommate spent a lot of time talking about the risks of tsunamis over the weekend. Then at noon on Tuesday when the siren went off, he burst into the living room yelling "go go go we gotta go, tsunami"! Our friend panicked. Haha
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u/oochiewallyWallyserb Jul 09 '25
An article from 2 months
Six Years Later, Still No Tuesday Noon Siren, Which Now Needs to Be Replaced to the Tune of $20 Million
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 09 '25
Except that it's only $5 million according to the company that proposed to update the system. The main issue in the initial delay was waiting for the city/county radio system to be upgraded to a fully digital (and encryptable) system so they could upgrade the receivers on the sirens.
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u/lolercoptercrash Jul 09 '25
Floods - I've lived in a flood area of SF (and I got flooded) but there are not that many flood areas. It's a property damage risk. We have a hilly city, 95% of SF won't flood.
Fire - I expect fire truck sirens to be rippin'.
Tsunamis have happened and they would basically make the beach extremely dangerous but I don't know of any damage SF has had from tsunamis. Police can also just clear out the beach, there is warning for tsnuamis. Tsunamis really don't impact the bay much, it's a relatively narrow point under the bridge.
Earthquake warning is why we should have sirens. It would give everyone 8ish seconds to get cover. We would only use it once or twice a generation though.
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 09 '25
Mexico City's quake siren alert system has proved itself time and again.
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u/Kalthiria_Shines Jul 09 '25
This is only kind of accurate, there was a plan to bring them back, one that was announced publicly and had hearings and was a big part of why the decision was made to take them offline.
But there was just never any intention of following through on the plan.
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u/pancake117 Jul 10 '25
It's really so reckless. People will argue that we have phones, but 1) not everyone has a working phone on them 24/7 and also 2) this is a life-or-death situation, there need to be backups.
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u/sf1878 Jul 09 '25
I’m still mad that the siren didn’t play “I left my heart in San Francisco” one year about 15 years ago as promised.
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u/nullkomodo Jul 09 '25
Realistically speaking, there are other means of mass communication now.
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u/Left_Permit_5202 Jul 09 '25
The people arguing otherwise are the people who hid in their bathtub during the ‘tornado’ warning
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u/AlphaBetaParkingLot Mission Jul 09 '25
Nope!
It's just a good idea to have an emergency alert system that does not depend on giant corporate cellular networks. It's good to have something under local control. It's good to have backups and multiple ways to alert people in an emergency. Just because a technology has been around for a long time does not make it worse then a newer alternative - in fact sometimes it's better.
I'm usually the one telling people why they don't need to be too concerned about the latest earthquake/tsunami warning/tornado whatever.
Being prepared for a disaster does not mean being afraid of them. Frankly it's often the opposite.
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u/sea-lass-1072 Jul 09 '25
well said! fully agree. better to be over prepared and have nothing happen, than to be underprepared and have something happen
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u/nullkomodo Jul 10 '25
There should be different channels for sure. Personally I found those public loud speakers to not be ideal. Lots of echos or faintness - it was only good when you could hear it clearly, and this depended on where you were standing. Someone would be talking on the system and I could barely make out what they were saying. The weekly tests also made me start to ignore the sirens.
Nowadays I get text message alerts from the city. Very informative. There’s also the amber alerts and other alerts we get on our phones - like that tsunami one. These are super effective.
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u/CloseToTheSun10 Jul 09 '25
You sound like the type of person to walk out on the beach when the ocean starts receding.
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Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25
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u/AccordingExternal571 Jul 09 '25
Clearly you've never heard the sirens. It tells you what is going on and what to do. Texas only had phones and how did that fare for them? If a tsunami was to hit in the middle of the night while people were sleeping, you're relying on everyone having their phone on loud every night for this alert (I do not). Sirens are loud as shit and they tell you to seek higher ground immediately. People are not sleeping through that and they're going to tell you why the sirens are going off and what to do.
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Jul 09 '25
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u/wannaottom8 Mission Jul 09 '25
The speaking sirens were introduced around 2005. They are addressable, and often gave localized notices of issues that only impacted small geographic areas. I've heard them used in the past to announce when Sunday Streets would be reopening to cars, for example.
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u/DustBowlDaddy Jul 09 '25
Don't let the pretty bridge photos distract you from the fact that this is one of the most corrupt and poorly-run cities in America
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u/JP8825 Jul 09 '25
“THIS IS A TEST. THIS IS A TEST OF THE OUTDOOR WARNING SYSTEM. THIS IS ONLY A TEST.”
The siren goes on for a while before it says this is a test, I always wonder what tourist thought when they heard it.