Memories of those sirens still make my blood run cold. A twister literally jumped over my boyhood home in Louisville once.
Not to make light of a tragedy, but the sirens also bring back a funny memory. When I was in grad school at Bama, I had a buddy from New York. A storm rolled in on a Friday, and the sirens went off. He ran outside to see what was going on, and we had to drag him back into the basement of the dorm. We explained to him what was going on and told him to keep his fool head down.
Well, during "the season", they test those sirens at noon on Wednesdays. Come Wednesday, a beautiful day, we're eating lunch in Paty hall when the siren test starts. My buddy, all 6' 8" and 270 pounds of him, hits the deck and tries to crawl under the table. He created quite a stir, but had a good laugh when we explained to him what was going on. I think he was pretty glad to get back to New York after the semester.