City works out kinks in siren

The city’s historic curfew siren returned to Whitefish Tuesday, and by week’s end a few bugs in the system seemed to have been fixed.

The traditional 10 p.m. siren had been quiet since September 2015 with the demolition of the old City Hall and subsequent construction of a new building. The new City Hall opened Monday, May 22 and the next evening the siren returned.

However, residents may have been alarmed when the first blast Tuesday night lasted longer than normal — roughly for a full minute.

City Manager Adam Hammatt said there was a system issue in the control panel that wasn’t allowing the length of the siren to be shortened.

Electrician Mark Heider worked on the issue to “set the blast length to about what it was in the past.”

Hammatt sent out an advisory on Wednesday addressing the issue.

“We are trying to work the bugs out of the new system,” he said. “Please bear with us.”

By Friday the issue seemed to be resolved, though a few folks in town note that the siren had been shortened too much.

Hammatt said two longtime Whitefish residents listened to the new time setting and felt like it was set correctly. He said if anyone knows an exact length of time it should be, the city welcomes input.

“The nice thing is we can adjust it for a couple seconds longer,” he said. “We’re happy to adjust it.”

Use of the siren dates back to 1919, when it wailed at 9 p.m. A new ordinance approved in October 1944 moved the time to 10 p.m.

The siren went off at all times of the day when it was used to alert volunteer fire fighters. Today, Whitefish has a mostly paid, full-time ambulance and fire department.