Western's historic whistle, called “Big Ole,” was cast in 1899 in Bellingham, said Paul Hughes, chief engineer of Western’s steam plant. The whistle is owned by the Whatcom County Museum and was placed at Western’s steam plant with the museum’s permission, he said.  Big Ole has been at Western since 2007.

Western Front:  Why is the steam whistle being tested?
Paul Hughes: Some of it would be for the mechanical function because there are control valves that control the steam for the whistle, because it’s done remotely. Every once in a while you want to have the controls exercised and tested to make sure they operate.
If you don’t operate them for a long time, then you don’t know if they’re going to stick or something like that. I think the larger reason why it’s tested periodically is so people on campus get used to it to some degree, but there’s a mechanical function to it also.

WF: For what kind of emergency would the steam whistle be used?
PH: Whenever the campus authorities, the police or whoever, would want to get everybody’s attention. Everybody can hear this campus wide, probably within most building spaces I assume. They would know that they had to check their text messages and e-mails.
The primary notification, from what I understand, is going to be through a text message or an e-mail or something like that. But how do you know to look at it?
And this came about after, if you remember, back on the East Coast the Virginia Tech shooting that they had. So that was I think what triggered Western to say we need to have this in case some kind of emergency happens here. God forbid it’s a shooting or something like that, but it could be an earthquake or anything that happens that for safety you want to get everyone’s attention.

WF: What will happen on Wednesday? For how long will the whistle blow, and how are people expected to respond?
PH: Once it gets to the right tone we’re going to make sure it blows for probably close to two minutes. It takes about 15 seconds or so before it comes up to the right tone, once the pressure equalizes and all that, because it’s a control valve that opens, and it takes a little bit of time for it to open.  It’s kind of a test to see if there’s any spots where people didn’t hear it.

WF: In the event that the whistle would blow and it was not a test, how should people respond?
PH: That’s something that you should follow what the University Communications has put out. What you’re supposed to do is after the whistle blows, you’re supposed to, if you’re signed up to receive a text message, you’re supposed to look at that, or you’re supposed to find out what’s going on. So that just tells everybody, hey we’re getting your attention, go look and find out what’s going on.

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