it's too bad when they were going to the trouble to install sirens all over "the last mile", they didn't think to have more than one alarm meaning.
Unless the response to the siren is the exact same thing, you can't use the siren for more than one thing.
Sounds like something that would have to be done when installing (well, really speccing and buying) them.
Does result in a strange "echo" because you hear other sirens talking delayed by the distance they are placed. But it does mean they can give extra info (e.g. during tests).
One long for high ground three short for… huh, that’s new. What do? Oh it says here, fire get out now.
you just added a dependency for something that only had one meaning.
The patterns were published in the phone books, so the phone book's deprecation didn't help keep things going.
And so, the sirens' use got simplified, with the side effect of "oh crap, we no longer have a way to tell people about different emergencies".
I hope the use of the sirens to indicate more than one thing is brought back.
the better to lure sailors onto the rocks!
(the word Siren comes from Greek mythology, Siren's were "humanlike beings with very alluring voices, they appear in a scene in the Odyssey in which Odysseus" stops "the ears of his crew with wax so that they were deaf to the Sirens. Odysseus himself wanted to hear their song but had himself tied to the mast so that he would not be able to steer the ship off its course."
in latin languages such as Italian, "mermaid" is "la sirena")