* It's 10:45 on a bright, sunny, New Year's Eve morning, here in Coos Bay Oregon. About 45 minutes ago two air raid/tornado type sirens began whaling across our twin cities (North Bend is 1/2 block from our home), but no one seemed to take notice. The crew working on a roof next door just kept scraping and pounding away. Flipping through our 18 (or so) over-the-air TV channels showed programming as usual. There were no cell phone alert sounds. "Sirens" + "Coos Bay" on a (last 60 minutes) Google search gave zero results.

Judging from past such experiences (here and elsewhere), I didn't even try finding current information via our AM-FM radio stations. (AM band radios are no longer being installed in many new electric vehicles.)

* There also seems to be no point in trying to urge FCC and civil defense authorities to take siren alert follow-through seriously --especially now that it's assumed we all have cell/smart phones --which can be activated in emergencies.

* It should be incumbent upon every active FCC broadcast license holder to have a manned or womaned emergency phone --set up to take civil defense and Weather Service calls --in order to immediately either broadcast emergency take-shelter instructions, "all-clear",  that the sirens were in error --or just a test.

** If our civil defense and FCC authorities don't take siren alerts seriously, why should we? (Because our lives depend on how we all respond to the next real alert --!)

** Meanwhile: we interrupt this program to let you hear those roofers --scraping and pounding away. They'll be the first to know if those sirens are for real, so pay them close attention.