Siren sounds
On Monday, from my rooftop vantage point, I watched dozens of vehicles and pedestrians get stranded when the “Wan An” sirens sounded. Every year, countless thousands are thus inconvenienced, but it does not have to be this way.
Here are a couple of suggestions to improve these important safety drills.
First, allow a “grace period” of a few minutes for people to find some sort of shelter. Do not insist that everyone stop in their tracks immediately. Give us enough time to duck into a coffee shop or something.
Second, use a different siren sound to give a “five-minute warning” before the actual drill begins.
My idea would be to “pulse” the sirens in five one-second bursts to indicate that an air-raid drill is imminent. This would give people enough time to get situated to wait out the drill. It would have the added benefit of causing actual alarm if people should hear the “real” siren without such a warning.
Third, schedule the drill on a predictable date and time.
For example, in my home town in Iowa, the sirens were tested on the second Wednesday of every month, at 2pm (and traffic was not disturbed, since these were mere equipment tests, rather than mandatory, public-participation drills).
I know the government does its best to publicize these drills and media outlets like the Taipei Times dutifully report them, but people lead busy lives and do not always have time to stay informed about these things, as evidenced by the view from my balcony on Monday, there are always a lot of people caught off guard.
With a few minor tweaks, this system could be made much more effective and far less inconvenient.
John Diedrichs
Taipei
Bernie and CNN
US Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders won the last seven out of eight states. Why did he lose New York?
One reason is CNN will not even talk about him.
More than 1,000 people went to CNN’s office in Los Angeles to demand that CNN talk about Sanders. CNN did not even talk about the protest outside their own office.
CNN is owned by Time Warner, which is the eighth-largest financial contributor to US Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign.
US President Barack Obama also lost New York. He then became president. So will Sanders.
Andres Chang
Taipei
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