Queen Anne resident Karen Fleming woke up at 4 a.m. Aug. 21 to the piercing sound of a siren going off and called 911 to complain. Police explained that the siren was located in the National Guard Armory in Interbay, she said.
Its not the first time the siren has gone off at the armory, Fleming said. "I haven't kept a log, but it seems to go off fairly regularly (in the last year and a half)." And it takes 10 to 15 minutes for National Guard members to get the siren to stop sounding an alarm, she said.
"We've heard it at various times," Fleming said of herself and her husband. "If they have an alarm that loud, why don't they have someone monitoring it," she wonders.
It turns out there is someone monitoring the alarm system, which was set off on Aug. 21 by a faulty motion sensor in an empty supply room, a sergeant at the armory said last week. And it was a glitch the National Guard technical staff couldn't fix immediately, the sergeant added.
The problem was that the old alarm system was way past its prime, according to Lt. Keith Kosik, a public-affairs officer with the National Guard.
"I've been told it's been replaced just on the heels of the last occurrence," he said of the motion sensor that developed a mind of its own. "The old (alarm) system has essentially been replaced," Kosik added.
"We try really hard to be good neighbors, and we certainly apologize," the lieutenant said. Kosik can be reached at pao@wa.ngb.army.mil.[[In-content Ad]]
