And this is just one reason why a whistle can be so important to have on you at all times - an elderly woman spent four days (!!!!) in ditch near a shopping mall, after she fell in and rolled to the bottom. If she had been able to let searchers (who scanned the area several times) know where she was ...

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.j...amp;amp;sc=1110

But it's such an unglamorous piece of gear <img src="images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

I realized yesterday how effective a whistle can be if needed. I'm an assistant football coach at my old high school and yesterday I forgot my ACME whistle that I use for coaching so I was using the Fox 40 that I keep on my keychain. About an hour into practice the Athletic Director came down and told me I had to stop using it because I was stopping the soccer scrimmage...3 blocks away!!

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Funny, isn't it? I felt exactly that way when, back in my Industrial Security days, I was issued a nice shiny silver whistle on the end of a nice shiny silver chain and told to wear it on my uniform. Bleah.

Until, naturally, I had to actually use it. <img src="images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

1. I was walking down a corridor in one of our larger buildings when I heard some odd sounds coming from around a corner. I sped up and turned the corner to behold two of our janitors trying to kill each other with their bare hands. A serious fight between two Koreans who I knew did not speak English. Not only could I not likely reason with them due to the language barrier, but they were seriously pissed off!
One hard loud blow of my whistle later, they were staring at me in shock and I was glaring at them in anger. With my free hand, I pointed in the direction of the cafeteria and they marched. I sat them down on opposite sides of a table and let them yell it out until they reached some sort of resolution. Then, as they left, I made them use different exits. End of conflict, and I never had to speak a word. (The whistle blast hurt my ears too, not just theirs, but I didn't let that show.)

2. I had called 911 for an employee who had ... oh, gosh, I don't remember now ... something happen to them, and then left them in the care of another company Medical Team member and ran outside and down the block to wave the ambulance in. Soon, I heard sirens approaching. I stood at a hard turn in the street just north of a T-intersection where the ambulance would come into our office park from the major city street. They came in and stopped at the stop sign at the T-intersection and I started waving my arms. You'd think a uniformed Security Officer would be more easy to spot ... apparently not. They turned south and started driving away from me!
One hard loud blow of my whistle later, their brake lights came on and I saw a head pop out a window and look my direction. I waved them back and led them to the incident, where they took over and handled everything nicely.

I didn't use it much, but when I did it sure was useful.

Stay safe,
J.T.

I'm currently working on a fundraiser with my mother's woman's club and the Connecticut Canine Search and Rescue team. Are plan is to sell whistles to parents for a nominal fee. attached to the lanyard or wrist coil will be a laminated trading card that has one of the dog's picture on one side and what to do if you get lost on the other. Its taking a lot of time to put together but hopefully it will get whistles to a lot of kids. Sadly, Fox 40's are out out of our reach budget wise so we are settling for good quality Chinese models.

Here is the link to CCSAR if anyone is interested: http://ccsar.org/ .

Chris

Jet,

You just reminded me of a relatively recent experience ... I’m on the emergency team at work, and have been working with a number of other folks for whom being prepared had meant that they had seen the evacuation plan. By and large these are great people, just haven't had much real world experience or training.

At one of our recent meetings, we were discussing the evacuation meeting point captains, their needed equipment etc. and I quietly observed that whistles were missing from the kits, some of the others at the meeting laughed and were vocal about their thoughts that whistles were totally un-needed.

One of the management members asked “…why whistles?” which gave me about two minutes of free speech in which I explained that the battery powered megaphones provided in the kits could be dropped, have dead batteries, get lost or be out of commission for some other reason, and that the average person can only shout for a little while and noted that the meeting point captain has to get a rapid head count and determine who is missing from the building evacuation etc. There were a few nods of approval, however the nay Sayers kept up their mantra of useless item, extra piece of equipment. I pointed out that redundancy is a great thing, even though we have Nextel cell phone radios and megaphones we should be prepared.

Feeling that I might better express myself by “walking my talk”, I pulled out my EDC neck lanyard from under my dress shirt. Many raised eyes at this. Even though I’ve worn it since before 911 and have kept an office USK, none at work had ever seen this in the years that I’ve worked there (and few others ever noticed my USK that I keep at my desk). I showed them my Fox 40 Glow in the Dark whistle, Brunton watchband compass and ARC AAA light. A few “McGyver” comments were made and management had us move on with the meeting.

After the meeting, my manager called me in and started picking my brain, I suggested EVACU-8 masks for the emergency crew. Interestingly enough, she gave the emergency team approval to purchase whistles and masks the next week. (SEE NOTE BELOW) I felt pretty good, since the issue was on the fence when the meeting wrapped up.

Later that afternoon, just before quitting time, a co-worker (who is also on the team) and I were in our shared office, when he made a comment about we’ll need to get a real whistle, “since that little thing would not be loud enough”. I smiled and tossed him the entire lanyard and said to check it out for himself.

As he raised it to his lips and started to blow it, I suggested that he should go outside, take a deep breath and really “honk down on it” since it was a “just a small whistle”. Whereupon he quickly took a deep breath and blew it so hard that his eyes bugged out, just as I got my fingers in my ears. (I figured he would blow the whistle, but I really did not expect him trying it out right then in the office!)

Hooooboy…the look on his face WAS PRICELESS! Especially as most of the first floor office staff on our side of the building came in to see what was going on. He said that he could not hear well for a few minutes afterwards and fully retracted his objections about the whistle. The rapidly collecting office staff (and management I might add) wanted to know what happened. He was totally red-faced at the amount of totally unrehearsed response and attention that he just got. He was completely honest about it and “fessed up” to management who was also quite interested in the disturbance to our normally very quiet and professional office work environment (lots of shirts and ties here.)

Having just gained a VERY attentive audience, I asked if he thought it that it would do the job, he said yes.

With a big grin, I told him that I was VERY happy he thought so, and reached under my desk and pulled out my office USK (contains about 10 pounds of "stuff") and said that if it had not been loud enough, I would let him try my full size STORM whistle.

Again, the looks were priceless as I unzipped the USK, reached in and showed him the much larger whistle. The onlookers thanked me for only letting him see the small whistle. As you may have already guessed, several others had to try out both of my whistles >outside< LOL.

Since it was Friday and almost quitting time, the whole thing died down with no hard feelings from management.

Some of the other team members and several onlookers had many questions about my office kit at the time, and over the next few weeks, several privately came to see me and get a better look at it. Slowly the light is beginning to spread.

In the following months, we’ve noticed that our immediate manager has been quietly been carrying a flat whistle on her key chain (she also has asked about my ARC AAA light, which I pulled out in a meeting during a <5 minute power outage two weeks ago.)

FOLLOW UP NOTE
In closing, just to make life complete, a meeting point captain’s megaphone was not working when we subsequently had a total building evacuation.

He was rather loud and adamant that he “should have had a whistle to fall back on”. Interestingly enough, he was not in the meeting mentioned above, his grousing further added to my credibility and I’ve noticed that my comments are being given more attention during our various meetings.

Hmmm…I’m still getting called “McGyver” but now it is with a smile or grin instead of sarcastic sneers. I’m fully aware that “preparedness is a journey and not a destination” and am pretty careful not to do anything to detract from the slowly increasing respect / attention that being prepared sometimes allows us.

btw
Our building evacuation was a full dress affair (the Fire Dept. had two units onsite with full crews). They were VERY complementary about our getting 500+ people out of our building in 3 minutes 42 seconds (as determined by our closed circuit TV system.)

Life is good and getting better.

Regards,
Comanche7

And AGAIN, this is why this forum is so invaluable - we get real-world examples of people who have tested or actually had to use all the "stuff" we preach to each other about carrying. Thanks for sharing, jet and Comanche7!

I was just re-reading the "READY.GOV" site while looking for some unrelated information. Two of the items they refer to in a building collapse scenario are a flashlight and whistle. Perhaps pointing management to that site could speed up the process of acceptance.

Chris

Comanche7,
LOL! That was hysterical! Good job spreading the word, and kudos on the way you encouraged your coworker to try it. An excellent lesson to all, given in a humorous manner. It's a great story; thanks for sharing it.
Stay safe,
J.T.

Maggot,

Your'e welcome. I'm impressed by the breadth of knowledge and sharing thereof that exists on E.T.S. and have learned quite a bit myself from reading many of the posts. We've got a great bunch of folks here.

Regards,
Comanche7

Hi Chris,
Your'e right. Actually we've had the flashlights included in the kits for a while now even though we're normally in the office during daylight hours. Had to listen to a bit of naysaying about that too...

We have the whistles in the kits now. The building evacuation occurred the day before they arrived. LOL

The evac team members have their EVACU-8's stored at their initial assigned reporting points which are scattered around the building.

Management has been more receptive lately and it's showing. Also noticed a bit more team spirit as well.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Kind of a funny thing, when I first saw the name of this thread, you and your outfit crossed my mind, I wondered how you were making out on the whistle project. Sorry that the F40's were out of reach. At least you were able to find something that worked for your purposes.

Keep us posted on how it works out.
Comanche7