Relics of Cold War Era : Silent Air Raid Sirens Unwanted

The Canoga Park Community Center museum has a relic that it doesn’t want.

It’s a 1950s-style air raid siren--a memento of the days when San Fernando Valley residents received regular Cold War reminders that Soviet bombers or intercontinental ballistic missiles could be on their way at any time.

The siren is perched atop a rickety wooden tower above the Owensmouth Avenue building. It is strategically placed so that its mournful wail can alert a nearby neighborhood as well as the Canoga Park business district.

But the cone-shaped siren doesn’t work. And neither do the 400 other air raid warning devices scattered around Los Angeles County.

The emergency warning network was unplugged in 1985 after officials discovered that more than 30% of the sirens were broken and would be useless if a nuclear attack was imminent.

Most of the Valley’s sirens remain in place, however. Los Angeles city officials say it would be too costly to remove the estimated 75 sirens that are spaced at about one-mile intervals between North Hollywood and Chatsworth. Citywide, there are about 200.

‘Weren’t Hurting Anybody’

“The decision was made to leave them where they are,” said Karen Patterson, the city’s disaster preparedness coordinator. “It was determined it would be very expensive to take them down. They weren’t hurting anybody. So they just left them up.”

For some 40 years, air raid sirens were a prominent fixture in the lives of virtually every Valley resident.

The sirens were tested in unison at 10 a.m. on the last Friday of every month. In the 1950s and early ‘60s, neighborhoods were clustered in pockets across the Valley--each within earshot of sirens typically placed atop tall fire stations or attached to 30-foot steel poles.

At the end of each month’s test, residents could hear the distant echoes of sirens miles away shutting down long after their own community’s alarm had quit.

By the 1970s, however, the Valley and other parts of Los Angeles had grown to where residents of some new neighborhoods couldn’t hear the sirens. A 1983 study indicated that even if all the sirens worked, only 42% of the county’s residents were within hearing range.

When the County Board of Supervisors ordered an end to the monthly tests in early 1985, Supervisor Kenneth Hahn explained that the sirens were giving citizens “a false sense of security. . . . There’s no defense against nuclear missiles with a warning time of as little as eight minutes” when launched from submarines.

The end-of-the-siren-testing order was music to the ears of some.

“It was a good idea to stop using them. I was very happy,” said Elan Dorriz, who for 15 years has operated his Tarzana hair salon next to a siren that is mounted on a pole above a Clark Street sidewalk.

“It was a very ugly sound. It was very scary. Everybody would jump out of their skin when the siren came on.”

Reseda repair shop owner Gary Gulessorian said his customers were often jolted by the piercing shrill of the siren that still towers above his Sherman Way garage and office.

Friend Hit the Floor

On one occasion, Gulessorian recalled, a friend who had just come from Lebanon where air attacks were common hit the floor when the siren went off.

“He said, ‘What is that?’ I kidded him, and I told him the Japanese were attacking. He said, ‘What should we do?’ ”

Studio City resident Margie Johnson remembers the siren that still stands a few hundred yards from her home of 42 years as being loud enough to awaken her from her soundest sleep--although it never went off at night.

When the siren was bolted to the top of a 15-foot tower on the roof of a city fire station near Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Ventura Boulevard in the early 1950s, residents were warned of the monthly tests so they wouldn’t panic, she said.

Newcomers to the Valley--those who weren’t around when the monthly tests took place--were surprised to learn that the sirens have been disconnected.

“I never heard it go off, but then I can’t remember us having an air raid since we moved here a year and a half ago,” said Woodland Hills resident Marc Sardella, who has a view of a Canoga Avenue siren from his front door.

“I’d always figured that if we were in a war situation, I’d be able to count on it,” he said Saturday.

Neighbor Gloria Andreae was equally shocked. “I’ve looked at it as a protection the 3 1/2 years I’ve lived here. They don’t work? Great. They’re no good if they’re disconnected.”

Chatsworth resident Jo Ann Suzukawa said she has all but forgotten about the Corbin Avenue siren behind her house. She said when she first moved into her Tuba Street home 10 years ago, visiting friends would ask what the hat-shaped object was.

“I don’t even notice it now. A tree in the back yard pretty much hides it,” she said.

Trees also partially screen a siren from nearby homes on Parthenia Street in Winnetka. In Encino, a 30-foot-tall siren is hidden among high-rise office buildings that have sprung up in recent years at Gloria Avenue and Ventura Boulevard.

Other Valley sirens are more noticeable.

Atop Municipal Building

The place of honor atop the Valley Municipal Building tower on Sylvan Street in Van Nuys is occupied by an air raid siren. One stands proudly next to an American flag in front of a fire station at Balboa Boulevard and Devonshire Street in Granada Hills. Another looms over a street lamp on Plummer Street next to a row of businesses in Sepulveda.

The siren atop the Canoga Park Community Center is also too prominent, in the view of Jack Dinsfriend, the center’s president.

“I don’t think it’s something we want to feature at our museum,” said Dinsfriend, a Valley resident since 1948. “If somebody wanted it, we’d probably say come and get it.”

The center is housed in a refurbished 1931 fire station. A community campaign led by Canoga Park minister Glen Kirby raised more than $100,000 to bring the building to earthquake standards after the Fire Department abandoned it in 1978.

Dinsfriend recalled the days of the siren tests as “a not very comforting time.”

“It was a constant reminder of the real danger of nuclear war. I remember those days only too well. They were scary.”