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So what do you do when the emergency siren goes off?
"Duck under the desk," replies Gil Sandler, the bard of Baltimore fads and foibles.
Wrong.
"Duck and cover" was the response in 1961. This is a new century.
"People have forgotten," laments Richard McKoy, the city's emergency management official who triggered the alarm Wednesday when thick black smoke began pouring from the Howard Street railroad tunnel.
"Obviously younger folks don't remember what that siren's purpose was. What we have to do is re-educate our public as to what to expect when they hear that sound - other than on Monday."
The 112 sirens in Baltimore have been tested every Monday at 1 p.m. since about a dozen years after they were first put up in 1952 as part of the Civil Defense system.
Then it was the bomb; now it's toxic chemicals.
During the Cold War there were two warnings, Sandler once explained in his "Baltimore Glimpses" column. The three to five minute alert signal meant "Enemy attack on Baltimore probable. Turn on your radio for emergency instructions."
The three-minute take-cover blast was more foreboding: "Enemy attack on Baltimore is imminent. Take cover."
A whole generation of Baltimore schoolchildren remembers curling up under their desks without really knowing why.
Of course, the enemy never attacked Baltimore.
And the first thing Baltimoreans did yesterday when the sirens went off for real for the first time ever was to call City Hall.
"We got a number of calls from people not understanding what was going on, but recognizing that something was happening," says McKoy, the city's emergency management director. "So our City Hall telephone lines were inundated for a while there. So that created somewhat of a problem for us."
McKoy figures he'll have to educate the public to alleviate that problem when the city revamps its emergency warning system.
"I may have to do it sooner," McKoy quips.
When McKoy activates the siren, he says, you're still supposed to turn on the radio and television. But McKoy doesn't make that decision alone.
He consults The First Responder - that's the first police, fire or public works official on the scene. The sirens are actually turned on by a fire department employee based at the city's communications center in police headquarters.
"Just as we're activating it, we're sending in a crawler to all the TV stations," he says. That's the little news strip that sometimes appears at the bottom of your screen.
"Duck under the desk," replies Gil Sandler, the bard of Baltimore fads and foibles.
"Duck and cover" was the response in 1961. This is a new century.
"People have forgotten," laments Richard McKoy, the city's emergency management official who triggered the alarm Wednesday when thick black smoke began pouring from the Howard Street railroad tunnel.
"Obviously younger folks don't remember what that siren's purpose was. What we have to do is re-educate our public as to what to expect when they hear that sound - other than on Monday."
The 112 sirens in Baltimore have been tested every Monday at 1 p.m. since about a dozen years after they were first put up in 1952 as part of the Civil Defense system.
Then it was the bomb; now it's toxic chemicals.
During the Cold War there were two warnings, Sandler once explained in his "Baltimore Glimpses" column. The three to five minute alert signal meant "Enemy attack on Baltimore probable. Turn on your radio for emergency instructions."
The three-minute take-cover blast was more foreboding: "Enemy attack on Baltimore is imminent. Take cover."
A whole generation of Baltimore schoolchildren remembers curling up under their desks without really knowing why.
Of course, the enemy never attacked Baltimore.
And the first thing Baltimoreans did yesterday when the sirens went off for real for the first time ever was to call City Hall.
"We got a number of calls from people not understanding what was going on, but recognizing that something was happening," says McKoy, the city's emergency management director. "So our City Hall telephone lines were inundated for a while there. So that created somewhat of a problem for us."
McKoy figures he'll have to educate the public to alleviate that problem when the city revamps its emergency warning system.
"I may have to do it sooner," McKoy quips.
When McKoy activates the siren, he says, you're still supposed to turn on the radio and television. But McKoy doesn't make that decision alone.
He consults The First Responder - that's the first police, fire or public works official on the scene. The sirens are actually turned on by a fire department employee based at the city's communications center in police headquarters.
"Just as we're activating it, we're sending in a crawler to all the TV stations," he says. That's the little news strip that sometimes appears at the bottom of your screen.
