Carstairs Hospital Sirens

The State Hospital is a psychiatric hospital near the village of Carstairs, in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. Like Broadmoor, it uses a network of Sirens to warn locals of an escape.

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Siren Locations
To look up the locations of each of the Carstairs State Hospital Sirens:

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History:
Carstairs Hospital was constructed between 1936 and 1939. Although it was planned and financed as a facility for "mental defectives", it was first used as a military hospital, during the Second World War. The War Office relinquished control of the hospital in 1948, when it became the State Institution for Mental Defectives. On 1 October 1957 there was a large transfer of 90 criminally insane prisoners from the criminal lunatic department at HM Prison Perth to Carstairs, and this new combined unit became the State Mental Hospital.

In 1994 the State Hospitals (Scotland) Act 1994 enabled management of the hospital to be transferred from the Secretary of State for Scotland to NHS Scotland, coming under the control of the State Hospitals Board for Scotland.

A redevelopment of the hospital was approved by The Scottish Government in September 2007. Construction began in April 2008 and the new hospital facilities were officially opened on 26 June 2012.

Sirens:
The hospital has an alarm system that is activated if any patient escapes to alert people in the vicinity, including those in the surrounding town of Lanark, and local villages such as Ravenstruther. The system is tested on the third Thursday of every month at 1300hrs when the all clear siren sounds. One infamous incident of a break out happened in 1976, when two patients, Thomas McCulloch and Robert Mone, murdered a nurse, a patient and a police officer with axes in an escape attempt.

The Cartairs Sirens use different "alert" and "all clear" tones to Broadmoor. For the State Hospital, there are two siren tones: "Patient Unaccounted For" and "All Clear".

The Patient Unaccounted For tone is the continuous sounding of the siren for 8 minutes not used during a system test).

The All Clear tone is three 30-second long blasts with 30-second intervals in between.

The sirens are tested on the third Thursday of each month, at 1pm. During a test, only the all clear sound is used.

Types of Siren:
The network consists of 9 sirens, made mostly by Secomak. Of the 9, seven are Secomak/Klaxon CS8's, one is a newer Klaxon GP8, and the last one is an old Secomak GP12. All of the sirens are mounted on poles, with the exception of the Lanark Police Station Siren (I), which is mounted on the building and the Main Hospital Siren, which is mounted on a tower.