BEAUMONT - An alarm system that warned Israeli citizens of incoming Scud missiles during Operation Desert Storm may someday warn Jefferson County residents of dangerous chemical spills, tornadoes and other impending danger.

A consortium of 14 refineries and chemical plants has signed a $3 .2 million contract to install a state-of-the-art warning system that would flash alerts on all of the county's radio and television stations within seconds of a chemical spill or tornado sighting.

The system also will rely on special radios to send emergency messages to schools, day-care centers, hospitals and nursing homes, and will use loudspeakers to warn neighborhoods near the plants.

Area police and fire officials will be alerted through special pagers.

The system - patterned after one used in West Germany to warn of attack from its Warsaw Pact neighbors - will be the first of its kind in the United States.

Federal legislation adopted after a chemical spill from a Union Carbide plant killed 3 ,400 residents of Bhopal , India, requires plants to install alarm systems to warn residents within a mile of plants of any hazardous spills.

Jefferson County's system will go much farther than the federal requirements, said Bill Munson, manager of Beaumont's Olin Corp. plant and chairman of the county's Community Awareness and Emergency Response Committee.

The committee is made up of representatives of the county's 25 refineries and chemical plants.

"This system will allow us to give specific instructions to people to tell them just what to do," Munson said.

If a plant accident released a cloud of ammonia sulfate, he said, a designated plant official would quickly use a special computer terminal to instruct the system to broadcast warnings that residents of a particular part of Beaumont should go inside, close doors and windows and turn off air conditioners until the cloud passes.

At the same time, the system would send the same message to officials at nearby Lamar University. If an event was going on at the university's Montague Center field house, which is adjacent to Olin's plant, a campus police officer on duty would get a message on his pager to turn off the building's outside air exchange and keep people inside.

Managers of the 14 participating plants are so enthusiastic about the system that they signed a contract with Sage Alerting Systems Inc. of Stamford, Conn., before raising all of the funding for it. Participating companies have pledged $2.4 million.

"I don't know what we're going to do if the other plants don't supply the other $800,000," Munson said. "We'll have to open up a banana stand, I guess."

Sage Alerting Systems President Jerry LeBow said the system had its genesis in 1982 when West Germany began installing a system to warn drivers along autobahns of traffic hazards.

Bosch, which built equipment for the system, suggested that it could also be used for civil defense warnings. The West German government paid Bosch $40 million for research and development.

LeBow, an electronics engineer, worked on the research project and holds some of the patents on its equipment.

When the Berlin Wall crumbled and West Germany no longer faced the threat of invasion from the East, the system was converted to use for warning of industrial and weather emergencies, LeBow said.

Now the German system is being expanded into what was once East Germany.

"They've got a lot of nuclear power plants in East Germany," he said.

Some parts of Israel had a similar system installed before the Persian Gulf War, LeBow said, adding Israel is planning to extend the system throughout the country. Singapore also is installing a system.

Equipment for Jefferson County's system already is being built in Germany by Hormann and Blaupunkt, with subsequent equipment under construction in the United States, LeBow said.

The system should be fully operable within 18 months, Munson said.

Each of the participating plants will have computers programmed with emergency information appropriate to each hazardous chemical made, stored or used in the plant, as well as for certain weather situations.

If an emergency occurs, a designated plant official would only have to enter a few codes to activate the system and send the right warning to area residents.

The system will broadcast the warning on an inaudible digital sideband of Beaumont radio station KYKR-FM, which broadcasts from a 2,000-foot tower near Nome in western Jefferson County. Each of the county's radio and television stations will automatically transmit recorded written and voice messages.

Control centers will be located at the Beaumont and Port Arthur fire departments, the Nederland-Port Neches-Groves police dispatching center and in the office of Jefferson County Emergency Management Coordinator Dick Nugent. Nugent also will have a portable control system.

A radio station in Conroe will provide backup in case a widespread disaster in Jefferson County puts KYKR off the air.

Munson said one future upgrade may include the ability to automatically turn on car radios and direct those radios to tune in broadcasting alerts. That Flash Gordon feature will be available in some 1992 automobiles, he said.

The participating companies have formed the non-profit Community Alerting Network Inc. to purchase the system and pay for its $50,000 annual maintenance. The non-profit group will turn the system over to Jefferson County after it is in place.

"I think this is a new era in public-industrial relations," said Jefferson County Judge Richard LeBlanc.

Most of the area plants already have alarm systems to signal nearby residents of chemical spills, Munson said, but plant managers wanted a system that had more capability.

"We looked at a lot of systems," he said. "We thought the Sage system was the best we could get."

When alarms go off, Munson said, telephone lines to and from police and fire stations often become so clogged that dispatchers can't respond to emergency calls.