Given the 99.99% of alarms are false or of minor consequence (cigarette, etc) they are easy to routinely ignore.

It’s like car alarms. They’ve been crying “wolf” for 20 years and nobody pays attention to them anymore.

All it takes is one time to be in a real fire though to put you on edge.

One night the alarm went off in my building years ago, I plugged my ears and waited for it to pass, then started smelling smoke. When I yanked my door open, the hall was already pretty full, and I choked my way out.

Had I just opened the window and stuck my head out I would have survived because they put the fire out pretty quickly, but standing on the street looking at a blackened and destroyed unit three floors below mine was kind of a wake up call. No pun intended.

Since then, I’ve been through many more false alarms, but I’m always a little more open to the possibility that something could actually be wrong.

I know that downtown, at the airport and around town, there are some older Federal Signal 1000 series Thunderbolts that are here and there but all of them had been decommissioned since 2003, and yet have not been removed (the Bridger Building especially.)

I’m wondering if, in future, anyone in local government (if they care) put up a regional Outdoor Warning System (severe weather/civil defense sirens) serving the Las Vegas metro area (?)

I think they haven’t been doing it because of cost of maintaining them or annoyance due to the high decibels they produce.

If it’s the latter, they should reconsider; I think just relying on the EAS alone (that’s the Emergency Alert System) by radio or TV stations (and cable operators) in the Vegas area, or at the casino’s own alarm systems will prove inadequate; a good several Federal Signal 2001 SRN’s or a few ASC T-135 Tempests can give a good, decent warning signal within, say the Flamingo/LVB section of the Strip.

But I think there’s going to be some government guys and gals in town who will “worry about the tourists going deaf,” or “it will force people to stay away from Vegas,” or ” it’s too costly,” and so on…

If that’s the case, I would recommend (to local government) installing a newly restored and refurbished 1950′s Chrysler Air Raid Siren on top of the now-bankrupt Fontainebleau; that siren is believed to have a good coverage from 4 miles up to 20, depending on the right conditions; another Vegas attraction in itself, but that’s just my opinion…

I know I’m going off a tangent, but even if that alarm at Caesars is loud and audible, it isn’t loud as an air raid siren; it’s more like a fire alarm to me.

My guess is the same as Rex’s—part of an EBS system designed for the Strip area, that was accidentally tripped. Would have been nice if someone had come on the loudspeakers and simply said so, rather than leave everyone wondering.

Will admit, it was the strangest sounding alarm I’ve ever heard. Very different from the tornado/emergency warning sirens in my city. Which brings up a point: these systems only work well when the public actually knows what the sirens indicate. Here, it is almost always tornadoes, but we are aware they can be sounded for things like dangerous chemical spills, or an attack of some sort. If they go off on a blue sky day, you know it’s not a tornado. And they test the system the first Wednesday of the month at 10 am, and everyone knows that as well.

I didn’t find out because there was really nobody to ask who would have known. Even the lady on the loudspeaker acknowledged that they didn’t know who it was, so I doubt anyone on the street could have known either.

I also doubt it was a door alarm because it wasn’t confined to the indoors and it was too widespread. It wailed in from invisible speakers (I assume on the roofs of buildings) and could be heard even when I crossed the bridge over to the Flamingo.

If I had to guess, someone accidentally tripped the Vegas version of the “Emergency Broadcast System”.

If it had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for news and official information.

If you look at the list of upcoming conventions, it appears that traffic may pick up because of the convention mix. Also next month there is the big Aviation Nation event at Nellis AFB and the rodeo is that far off. These should bring people to town.