New Spring Rock Siren Bugs Old Town South Residents

Standing in the southeast athletic fields of during a game, how well can you hear a lightning-warning siren 300 yards to the west?

That’s the question at the crux of a debate over what to do about such alert horns in Spring Rock. Following complaints from soccer teams that they in fact could not hear the alerts from the detection system atop the park’s football shed (west of the roller rink,) the District with a second horn on the “Steve’s Place” shack in the east of the park.

But while that new horn is much closer to the soccer fields, it is also about 50 yards from residential homes in Old Town South—and the close, loud, repeated blares are becoming a problem for those residents.

“This is impacting the peace and quiet of a neighborhood,” said Central Avenue resident Rick Zak at Tuesday night’s Park Board meeting. “Nobody’s objecting to lightning detection. [But] it seems as though we’re solving one problem, and lighting up this whole block and blocks [to the east] with the new one.”

In fact, the question has become if there really ever was a problem. The horns are supposedly effective up to 700 yards (see the above map provided by Zak,) enough to even warn swimmers at the Western Springs Service Club—so why can’t soccer teams hear them at 300 yards, even during the intensity of competition?

Fellow Central resident Mike Krull, who said his young daughter has been woken up in the evenings by the multiple blasts and that his own home office work has been badly disturbed, suggested the issue might be more about education and enforcement than siren location and decibels.

“I’ve sat on my front porch [at 4605 Central,] heard the detector go off, watched another soccer league game in progression, watched the coaches look at each other, look at the referee, shrug their shoulders and say, play on,” Krull said. “Is this really that they can’t hear it, or is it an education issue, or is it that some soccer leagues are too darn competitive and don’t want to hear it?”

Trustees and Park District staff replied that the complaints about not hearing the siren or seeing the flashing strobe light were brought to them by a consensus of soccer teams—but admitted that the numbers didn’t seem to add up. (Board President Bob Daman remarked that even at a loud homecoming Hinsdale Central football game, lightning alerts could be heard from Ruth Lake Country Club half a mile away.)

But they expressed concern about hearing that soccer teams might be willfully or ignorantly disobeying the signals, and encouraged residents to report and such behavior.

Discussion centered on perhaps investigating whether louder equipment could be placed on the football shed to remove the Steve’s Place horns. Board Commissioners had also previously proposed adding a timer to shut off the eastern horns at dusk (the full detection system shuts off at 10:15 p.m.,) although the idea became defunct when it was agreed that the horns are an issue at any time of day.

One idea that the Commissioners agreed on was to schedule a test of the old horns with soccer coaches present. “Maybe we assemble them there and sound it, alert them to what it sounds like,” offered Vice-President Jennifer Cromheecke, to much accord. “That’s what got this whole thing going: they claimed that they can’t hear it. So let’s go verify that they really can’t hear it.”

“I think it’s fair to say we’ll investigate the options,” Daman added.