Port Alberni residents hear it the first Wednesday every month, the monotonous drone of the tsunami warning test.
A group of high school students set out to change that, testing dozens of sounds from baby ducks to bongo drums to heart beats until settling on something more exotic: the didgeridoo.
Starting in the fall, the low burr of the wind instrument invented by indigenous Australians will reverberate across the mid-Island town once a month, followed by the calming words “this is a test.”
It’s the result of a two-month project by Grade 11 students at Alberni District Secondary School in an effort to make a positive change in the community, said civic studies teacher Anne Ostwald.
›› Scroll down to hear a didgeridoo
There were criteria for the sound.
“It had to make you feel good, it had to make you smile” and it had to be audible, she said.
The alarm that sounds when an actual tsunami is forecast will stay the same, the wail of a siren dramatically more urgent than the didgeridoo.
After whittling down it to six finalists, including the sound of a Martin Mars water bomber, students went to a Port Alberni town council meeting to gauge reaction.
“When we brought it to city council, as soon as the didgeridoo sound came on everybody on council and everyone in the audience had the biggest smiles on their faces,” Ostwald said.
“It’s like the air sparkled.”
Grade 11 student Freya Knapp said the biggest challenge was finding a sound the class could agree on.
“Some people wanted animal sounds, some people wanted music,” she said.
“At first, I thought of a whale sound or a duck sound. Now that I look back, I think, What was I thinking?”
The new sound will debut when the city gets its new tsunami warning system in the fall.
