The fire sirens in many locations are also used as tornado alerts. If the siren begins to run, interminably, for a prolonged period, that is the warning that a tornado has been sighted. Again, there is no need for individual pagers or phones, (although my county has instituted a “reverse 911” system to spread the word by phone, as well). Anyone without an electronic device on their hip can hear the siren and know that they need to take cover.
zombie or no
they used to alert volunteer fire fighters to assemble at the fire house to go to a fire. then later a pager, if there was pager coverage, would be used in addition. then later a cell phone, if there was cell phone coverage, would be used in addition. still people may not be able to hear those devices but they might hear the siren.
then they were used also as air raid/missle warnings.
they are also used to alert the general public to severe weather warnings for people not near a tv or radio tuned to a local station. even in major cities there are sirens for this purpose which may no longer be operated by or located at the fire department.
I grew up in a small town with a volunteer fire department. Well, there were maybe 4 full time paid employees. And there was a siren on the roof. This was before the time that pagers became popular.
One long, um, “whoop” of the siren told volunteers that there was an ambulance call and for the on-call ambulance crew only to head to the station house.
A series of up down whoops was the fire call and everyone on call was supposed to head in.
This doesn’t apply to everyone, obviously, but in the hilly terrain where I live, cell service is spotty. The siren alerts VFs who live or work or just happen to be in a dead zone. And, as danceswithcats said, electronics (and people) are not perfect, so the siren acts as a backup.
I grew up in a town where the siren went off every day at noon — we called it the “noon whistle.” I now live in a different town, a block from the firehouse, and I often wish it went off at noon. There was something comforting about it.
My city has an emergency siren, but they use it mainly to signal shelter-in-place warnings when there are problems at nearby oil refineries and chemical plants. They test the thing every Wednesday at 11 AM.
Where I grew up, this was the only use of the sirens. More specifically, it was used to tell the air crews to get to their planes and for everyone else to pull off/stay off the roads so as not to impede them. The siren was supplemented by a set of red lights mounted on the sides of utility poles. Fortunately, the only times we ever heard the siren or saw the lights on was during tests.
On a smaller scale, I’ve seen fire departments that had flashing lights and warning bells that would ring when the department was responding to a call so that people driving past the fire station wouldn’t get plowed over by the HOLYSHITFIRETRUCK that would come barreling out suddenly.
Otherwise, living on military bases, we use a loudspeaker system (called the “Giant Voice” that issues various warnings (unless you’re at a base downrange, usually weather-related warnings like typhoons and tornadoes) as well as playing routine bugle calls (you haven’t lived until you’ve lived on a base where they play Reveille every morning at 6AM and your dorm is across the street from one of those demon speakers)
Living in Oklahoma and Kansas, I’m also familiar with the Storm Sirens, which make the most hellish skull-piercing noise to warn of nearby tornadoes (along with the weekly tests, which my wife’s home town for some reason did at 7AM on Saturdays).
When I was a child growing up on an island in the middle of the Pacific, that siren meant “Get uphill fast, possible incoming tsunami!”
I love the different pictures of the US that I get from this site. I had no idea that so much of your fire service was voluntary.
In the UK, we do have some, what we call, retained firemen, but most are full time employees of the local council. In the early days (late 17th century) they were all private fire companies paid for by the insurance companies.The Metropolitan Fire Brigade (for London) was established by Act of Parliament in 1865 and other municipalities followed suit.
After WW2 they were all effectively taken over by the local councils and now, some are council run, and some are authorities in their own right - although all are funded by local taxpayers.
We don’t have sirens, except on the trucks, and retained firemen are called by pager or phone alert. They have no right to break any traffic laws when going to a fire either.
The only alert we have that is similar to your fire siren, is the Lifeboatmen’s maroon. Lifeboats here are owned and operated by a charity, and all the crews are volunteers. When they are needed they use phones and pagers, but also, by tradition, they fire off a rocket that explodes with a very loud bang.
Now that is cool.
Y’all should rig it so it makes fireworks in the pattern of a life preserver or something too.
When I was growing up, they tested the air raid sirens every Tuesday at 10:00 am.
I always wondered why the Russians weren’t smart enough to attack at 10:00 am on Tuesday mornings.
In the towns where they sound the sirens at noon every day, what do they do if a fire breaks out at noon?
Few tornados here, but the ones near the beaches are used in the advanced tsunami warning system.
I think the answer is simple, bureaucracy rarely keeps up with technology. There was a stink a few years ago about phone companies renting rotary dial phones for $10 a month because the contract started in the 50’s. The question about railroads is still on the driving test in my area, but the last train ceased operation like 80 years ago. “This is a test of the emergency broadcast system” only runs on like 6 channels out of 70.
I read a lot about fire signals being used for weather alerts.
The fire signal in the small town i reside in is under the control of the civil defense director, and that could also be the fire chief in some areas, but the signal certainly should sound with a different tone for weather emergency’s.
As a retired firefighter, our siren/signal is sounded a second time when the retires are needed to assist. I still carry my EMS pager with the fire tone and help the fire crew whenever i can.
Our County Fire Chiefs Association tries to keep all city protocols as uniform as possible for dispatchers so Fire Signal is only sounded when there is a request or it can be manually activated from the fire station.
Our signal is also sounded for 30 sec. along with the pagers as the casket is loaded into the hearse.
Just to add to my about 10 yr old post, they are not part of the fire service, but civil defense, just part of the use is to alert firefighters though that use is mostly obsolete.
I grew up in the country. The edges of the fire district were over 7 miles from fire house (1). Not everyone who lived in the district was a member VFD. My dad worked a full time job along with working the farm so he did not have time for the meetings. But if we saw smoke we threw shovels, hoes, and maybe an ax or pick in a car or truck and headed to the smoke. The need of the siren was to tell non members to look for smoke. Living in the country if your neighbor need help you responded so the siren was necessary.
My father in law was on a different VFD they used a horn. The horn was used by code to tell the volunteers where the fire was in case they did not have their pagers with them.