Pre-Dawn Air Raid Siren

raymond

On March 26, 2013 at approximately 4:15 am I was woken up by an air raid siren that lasted at least 10 minutes, possibly longer. I live at 76th and Third Avenue in Bay Ridge and it sounded fairly far away. I called 911, 311 and the 68 precinct and no one knew what it could be. Did anyone else hear this? Does anyone know what it was?

MOD

I think it has to do with the Jewish holiday/observances..etc.. (sorry, I'm horrible at remembering details)

raymond

I thought it might be something related to Passover as well, but at 4:15 in the morning??

raymond

And if it was for Passover, why was neither 311 nor 911 informed of this so when people called in thinking something was wrong, they could be informed otherwise?

thelambchop

my guess is also passover. many fridays during summer our whole neighborhood has the pleasure of hearing it. once i figured out that it's a sabbath siren, it went from being pretty scary to just highly annoying. my guess is that a siren that loud is technically a noise code violation, which is why they don't let the city know they're doing it.

whynot_31

The last time we had this conversation:

http://brooklynian.com/forum/brooklyn-heights-dumbo-and-downtown/air-raid-siren

a different conversation:

http://www.airraidsirens.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12327&sid=563990a6a95624176fd91a6168ab7cb7

whynot_31

Today, a year later, I think I have solved why the siren occasionally sounded at random times in Crown Heights....

I don't find it hard to believe that this siren occasionally randomly went off, in addition to not going off when it was supposed to:

"Residents of Crown Heights were surprised to hear the distinctive Shabbos siren go off, despite the fact that it is Monday afternoon and the alarm hasn’t been heard in weeks.

The caretaker of the alarm, R’ Mendel Goldstein, told CrownHeights.info that the alarm was being tested after its repair, following a hiatus of three weeks during which it was out of service.

The alarm hasn’t been working for several weeks due to the failure of its “ancient electrical wiring,” he said, some of which is over 100 years old. After three weeks of waiting, new and upgraded wiring was installed by Con-Edison.

The alarm was set off at about 3:45pm, confirming that the ‘Shabbos notification system’ was working and back in service."

http://crownheights.info/crown-heights-news/429496/after-test-run-shabbos-alarm-back-in-service/#comments