“a siren blaring on and off that I can only describe as sounding like an air raid siren”, Anyone Else Hear It?

78°

Mostly Cloudy

Columns

by Prince Of Petworth October 17, 2016 at 1:45 pm 6 Comments

siren
Photo by PoPville flickr user Clif Burns

“Dear PoPville,

I live in Adams Morgan and for the past hour (since about 9:30am), there has been a siren blaring on and off that I can only describe as sounding like an air raid siren. It continued on and off until 11:15 or so. Does DC have a city-wide air raid siren system, and, if so, how are we supposed to know the difference between a test and an actual alert?”

Bill

Yes! I heard this faintly around 8:30 this morning at Kalorama & 19th and could not figure out what it was.
nevermindtheend

Same here! I thought I was hearing things.
Liz

I heard it, too! Also at 19th and Kalorama. No idea what it was, but I’m very curious to find out.
jphammer78

I heard it at night this weekend in Park View.
lulugaboo

I heard it too. Reminded me of those tornado alarms from when I lived in the Midwest.
RedUncleMatt

On Wyoming Ave, they are doing work on the parking lot on the north side of block between Columbia and Connecticut. There’s this funky machine that’s sorta a sander/zamboni, and it was making that sound as it was going over the surface of the lot.

Speaking of, they’ve been working on that lot for a while, but I have no idea what they are trying to accomplish. I kinda feel like the owner got oversold on surfacing – as in, ‘yeah, for $3k, and 2 days work, we could throw down some asphalt and be done with it…. OR, for a limited time, you can get the Rain-X protectant and SPF85 extra awesome parking lot surfactant…’.

Now, they’ve been working on this for a month, and I still don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish. Can anyone shed some light on that?

Subscribe to our mailing list