Sleeping peacefully this morning, I was awakened at 4:00 by a familiar sound - the local fire department’s fire siren.
I’ve lived in this town all my life - at varying distances from the fire station ranging from directly across the street to 10+ miles away. All my life I’ve heard that siren and just accepted it. It sounds every time there is a fire call, as well as at 12:00 noon and 6:00 pm every day.
But what is the purpose. Can it be that, despite modern communication technology, it is still necessary to sound a siren that can be heard miles away in order to alert the townsfolk of a fire?
Help me understand what appears to be a very archaic practice.
Well, some departments keep the siren simply for tradition. However, the modern communication technology is very expensive and some volunteer departments simply cannot afford pagers and/or radios for everyone, so they rely on a phone bank or siren.
My department has addressed that issue, and weekly tone tests were scrapped over 10 years ago. We’ve also dropped the number of siren cycles from a two minute run, to 45 seconds.
Why continue to use a siren? Pocket pagers are not an absolute science. Depending upon terrain and the radio frequency in use, there are dead spots which preclude receipt of a dispatch message. Beyond that, they suffer from occasional dead batteries, and as such need to live in the charger overnight.
Sometimes we folk who carry them will forget them-leaving them in the house or car while doing ordinary work around the house.
Cutting the grass eliminates my ability to hear the pager, but I will hear the siren.
Not unlike other issues in life, I endure a minor inconveniece for the collective good. Hopefully, you’ll agree.
Sirens are simple and cheap and rarely break down. It doesn’t require people to be running around with a beeper or phone. It reaches all users simultaneously (subject to limitations due to the speed of sound) instead of having to contact them one by one.
New technology is not automatically the best way to do things.
1.The Siren on board a Fire Truck… Needed to stop traffic (not that anyone does)
2.Air Raid Siren? … Well I guess a Majority of people would just head inside or search for answers on TV or Radio on instinct.
A Call box? Well I guess this is needed for those who dont have anyother availible way to call the Fire Department. In the case of a fire, it may be the only way to get a call out… (If a house or buidling burns down at 3:30 am… you cant use your own phone, its inside the fire… and who are you going to wake up ?) at other times, shock would set in, in the middle of it all, and seeing the call box might be the thing to “snap” out of such a funk… it would remind you of what to do etc.
If we are talking about the Third item, I would like to point out that in Atlanta GA, these are not commonplace at all… I saw some once in RI, when I was on vacation there. A few police call boxes can be found downtown, or on college campuses… I don’t know if these make noise when activated.
If it’s sounding twice a day, you have a small minded bureaucrat running the station. No large town would put up with such a thing. I’ll bet the guy in charge is 70+
Some years ago I was driving through a town in California (Paso Robles) and a siren started up that was astounding. I could not believe how loud that thing was!
It was used to gather the volunteer fire department, whose members might be miles away.
Well, my town has a fire “horn”, not a siren. Imagine a very very large cow mooing, only with an added oomph on the beginning. It doesn’t sound for fires, it actually only sounds for two things:
Every day at 12:00 noon it goes off
For a firefighters funeral it is sounded several times
My dad is the volunteer fire department chief, so I get to know all these tidbits. It basically goes off for historical reasons, tradition and all. The department used phone banks a while ago. When you dialed the number (this was before we had 911) the phone in every firefighters house would ring. And I mean ring and not stop. Not “riiiiiiiing…pause…riiiiiiiiing…pause…” but “riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.” Once 911 was put into effect, everyone relied on pagers, though with the phones, they had both. About a minute after the phone started to ring, the pager would go off.
As for loud? Walk by the station at noon and you will have ringing in your ears for hours. Suprisingly, very few people complain, they actually enjoy the fact that they know when it’s noon, since they might be outside without a watch or something.
I grew up in a small town where fire horns were sounded. There is actually a method to the madness.
First of all, lots of places still use volunteer firemen. The fire horn tells the town (1) where the fire is (the town is broken down into districts and (2) how many alarms (how many firehouses should respond).
So, a 2 alarm fire in district 3 would sound: 3 blasts for the district, short pause, 2 blasts for the alarms, long pause, repeat.
Lots of times, the firemen will make it to the fire before the trucks.
Although fire horns may seem anachronistic today, townspeople still depend on them for information as well as for warning.
It can be used to notify the public in certain emergencies, though it would take some pre-notification. An example may be if a tornado watch it issues, a public notification that a fire horn means that a tornado is on the ground. I don’t know if it is used this way but would think it would be a good use for it.
Perhaps “siren” is not the correct term. What I’m referring to is a device located at/attached to the fire station itself. The best description of the sound it makes is like that of an air raid siren - starts at a low pitch, gets progressively higher in pitch and volume, then dies back down again. It sounds twice for fires, and once at 12 noon and 6 pm (tone tests I assume).
This is a volunteer fire dept. All of the firefighters have pagers, and I believe the officers have two-way radios in their vehicles.
This is no big city, but it is the largest town by area in my particular state.
I suppose the pager reliability factor makes sense…but it still seems very archaic.
In a town with an all-volunteer force, the town siren alerts non-firemen that several people are soon going to be on the road in their own (unmarked) vehicles, driving in what may appear to be an unreasonable hurry. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence along the lines of “This guy behind me was honking his horn and flashing his lights, and I couldn’t figure out what he wanted, and then I heard the fire siren, so I pulled off and let him pass me. Lucky he got to that fire on time.”
I was in the volunteer fire service for a total of 17 years. I’m awake right now because my local VFD’s siren just went off at 2:22 AM !!! It is activated for ANY call, not just emergencies. I was wondering what other folks around the country have to say about these things. I can accurately tell you they are NOT required - at least here in PA. They are used mainly because of “tradition”. Anyone reading this who is, or has been involved in the Fire Service knows this to be true. My local VFD’s siren goes off at ALL hours-24/7/365. I was a member there from 1-2003 to 1-2007. I tried so many times to get rid of it, or to at least have it go off only from sun rise to sun set because NO ONE in the community liked it. As a matter of fact, people have shot it several times. So, all this would naturally beg the question WHY is it still used. " TRADITION" Each time I would bring up the subject at the monthly meetings under “new business” and make a formal motion at the meeting to use it only during daylight hours, I would be shot down- and I was one of the Assistant Chiefs ! In most states the county and state government has very little or no control over it’s volunteer fire departments except their conduct while driving Emergency Vehicles and personal vehicles to calls. This varies state by state. The only way I know of to stop this nonsense is to get a petition and present it to your Borough Council. Be forewarned though- the Volunteer Fire Service is very powerful politically speaking ! Most politicians will not go against them. I firmly believe that is why the county and state never steps in. Think about it. Over 70% of America is protected by volunteers. Actually, I think the number is higher than that. In the next community, about a 1/2 mile away from me, they are comprised of seven VFD’s. Their sirens are only activated during daylight hours. Around here it is at the discretion of the fire chief of each department. All a Chief has to do is call Fire Dispatch and say please do not activate my stations sire at night and it’s done ! That simple ! Based on all my past experience, belonging to three different VFD’s over the years, two of which “did not” use a siren, they are NOT needed. Not one Fire Fighter I have ever met has missed a call because they did not hear their departments siren !
I lived in Eindhoven, Netherlands, for a few months. They have an emergency siren that sounds every Monday at 12:00. This happens to test the siren and remind people of its existence. One day there was a big fire at the PSV stadium, and people had to stay inside because of the smoke and everything, so the siren was working. As it was not 12:00 of a Monday people knew that it was the real deal.
I live in a small town with a fire siren and grew in a smaller town with one. The damn things were sounded at noon and 6:00 in the afternoon six days a week and when there was a fire call. The daily siren was mostly for the convenience of parents – it told wandering children that it was time to start making their way home. The fire call siren may once have served to gather the volunteer fire department once but that is now done by pager and cell phone. The real purpose of the fire call siren is now to warn the general populace to look out for the firefighters as they rush to the fire house – the first guy there gets to drive the truck – and for the trucks as they speed away. It’s a legitimate public safety measure.
On top of that it gives everybody the chance to rush out on the sidewalk, ask each other where the fire is and watch the general car race that ensues.
