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At noon on Saturday, April 28, the University of Maine will test its long-dormant Steam Plant whistle to see if it still works and examine the feasibility of integrating the whistle into an emergency alert system.
“It will be loud,” said university spokesman Joe Carr, adding that people “shouldn’t be alarmed.” The whistle, if it works, will be heard throughout the campus, Orono and Old Town.
“The point to Saturday’s test is just to assure ourselves it works,” Carr said. “The idea is to possibly begin using it again as part of an emergency notification system.”
The whistle itself, which is approximately the size of a two liter soda bottle and is cast in bronze, currently resides in heating plant superintendent Charles Spalding’s office.
“I’ve already tested the whistle,” he said. “It works.”
“I’m in the process now of replacing rusted lines and freeing up the valves from it not being used,” he said. The test on Saturday will send 130 pounds per square inch of pressure through a one-and-one-quarter-inch line and through the whistle, which will theoretically emit a shriek that will be heard for miles around.
The whistle has been dormant for at least 10 years, although university officials have been speculating as to the exact date the whistle stopped being used. In the ’60s, the whistle was used as part of an emergency alert system.
Charles Chandler, associate director of Public Safety, remembers the days when the whistle was a weekly reminder of the troubled times they lived in.
“I started school in 1966,” he said. “It was there then, and was tested at noon every Friday.”
“In those days if you heard several long blasts, that meant you were supposed to seek shelter because a nuclear attack was anticipated . and if there were a series of short blasts you were supposed to seek shelter immediately because a nuclear explosion was imminent,” he said.
The surrounding area was considered a likely target for a submarine-based ballistic missile attack, Chandler said. “In those days there was a wing of B-52 bombers at Dow air base … and there were two or three nuclear weapons stored out . at what is now the MSO storage facility.”
Submarines could have approached the coast of Maine and launched an attack on the air force base with “very little warning time,” Chandler said.
He said that the tests usually consisted of a blast of about 60 seconds and served two purposes. “Number one of course ensured that it worked. The other one was that people recognized it.”
If the whistle works, the university is exploring the possibility of integrating it into a campus-wide network of communications systems designed for emergency alerts.
“It could be part of a notification system for any emergency … of concern to people in our community,” Carr said. “This would be an ideal outcome because the system is already in place.”
“Alternatively, the university would have to buy some sort of new system.”
Officials won’t know how the whistle could be used or what sort of emergency alerts it would be used for until after Saturday’s test.
