The Early Use of The Sigalert
One of the first major "Sigmon traffic alerts" was broadcast on January 22, 1956, causing a traffic jam. The alert described the derailment of a passenger train near Los Angeles' Union Station and requested any available doctors and nurses to respond to the scene. Too many doctors, nurses, and sightseers drove there, making the situation worse. (The first SigAlert was on Labor Day weekend in 1955, and many stories on the SigAlert conflate these two events.)
At first, the LAPD issued about one alert a day, but soon other agencies were calling in messages they wanted broadcast, including rabid dog reports, gas leaks, and even a ship collision in Los Angeles Harbor. A pharmacist who had made a potentially fatal error in filling a prescription took advantage of the system to warn the customer (who, fortunately, heard the SigAlert in time). It was also used to warn about the impending Baldwin Hills Dam collapse in 1963.
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