Fire whistle

[nyair1]

This has nothing to do with why they use it, but on the same subject, one thing i have heard from people (non members of the department) is when the siren goes off, then its time to turn on the scanner and see whats going on.

More on topic, its normally more for traditions sake then anything. Although if im driving past a department and they go off, ill normally drive a little slower and look around for members responding so i can get out of their way as we are a stupid courtesy light state.

The stupid courtesy light wakes up you people that are driving around on the phone or shaving or reading the paper to let you know that we are going to do something important. It could be your house or family member that we are going to help.

The horns are still good if your outside doing stuff and don't have your pager with you. Also the cellphone texts don't always come right over with the pager. Mine sometimes don't show up until 5 mins later after the tone goes out. People that whine about a firehorn shouldn't move next to a fire station. Just like people that move by the airport and then ***** about the noise.

 

[Confuzzled]

All kinds of different styles out there, but this is what you see a lot of now:

Some of them looked like vacuum cleaners or spinning tubas and most of them were installed at the height of the Cold War.

Anybody remember these?

Yeah, yeah, not exactly what the thread is about, I know.

 

[wmetech1]

I had these removed and replaced with Whelen WPS electronic sirens which were basically big vehicle sirens that ran stacked 400 W drivers for each speaker segment. The motorized AC sirens were almost bulletproof (literally... some of them had bullet holes),

Well I guess some are whiners, and other (try) to solve their problems a different way :lol:

BTW, you CAN do siren control through a trunked system, and even a P25 system!

I don't doubt that at all, we're just talking specifically our dispatch system here in Westchester, NY (60-control).

The Whelen speaker mass notification system rings a bell, never seen one in action though.

Confuzzled: That siren looks awesome, self contained engine too? I'm too young to have remembered any of those though....

 

[KD2DLL]

Many departments Upstate still use them. When I say Upstate I mean North of the Mohawk River/Erie Canal.

In Washington County most of the departments that no longer have them it is because they needed repair and they just did not want to spend the money to do so, or the fire department built a new station and never felt like moving the siren and equipment, they just cut the wires and left it.

There are a few departments that still believe very heavily in the use of their siren, in their words "to let the public know that there is an alarm and pay attention."

I will say that I am nostalgic and I do like the sound of a good fire siren. Back in the day it was "blow until they go!"

Ah, another person that gets it! Thank you!

The volunteer fire department up here still uses a siren. It cycles 4 or 5 times and shuts down so it's not terribly annoying during sleep time. Not only does it let folks know that there is an alarm, but it's also a subtle reminder that the fire service here is a volunteer one and that good men and women get up and respond 24/7 when called.


#WWFD 12/24/2012 RIP, Chip and Tomasz.

I have to agree with that picture! Here in Schenectady County, every dept except the city of Schenectady and Scotia use a siren still. I am not too sure about the other depts in the county, but I know with Rotterdam Junction VFD and Pattersonville VFD, their siren starts aproximatly 15 seconds after the tones go out. I like that because the siren doesnt drown out the page since the one siren is literally right across from my house, and soon as it goes off, you can't hear a thing. Actually literally half way through this post, Rotterdam Junction was toned out.

 

[xxdanielt3]

I'm from PA, but I'll chime in on this topic. As far as whistles go, we still have one for every station in our county. I can say personally for my station 4-5 firefighters live on the outskirts of our "jurisdiction", and sometimes their minitors don't alarm so they rely on the sound of the whistle in the distance.

My department is not fortunate enough to have enough minitors for all the firefighters so some, including me, have used personal funds to purchase one. I was lucky enough to get a minitor III, others could only afford a minitor II. Seeing now that our county has stopped using the 33.700 frequency to dispatch, their minitor II's are worthless.

 

[kb4mdz]

wmetech: That siren is the famous (in siren enthusiast circles) Chrysler Air Raid Siren.

From wikipedia:"The Chrysler Air Raid Siren, Or commonly known as the Chrysler Bell Victory Siren was an outdoor warning siren produced during the Cold War era that had an output of 138 dBC at 100 feet (30 m)."

There's another hobby to suck your time & money; chasing, recording & obtaining & restoring sirens.

 

[902]

The Whelen speaker mass notification system rings a bell, never seen one in action though.

It was a good idea on paper, but the problem was that different sound frequencies travel different distances (it's not like the speed of light and radiowaves) and at a distance you would have echos (like radio "multipath") and only the lower frequency components could be heard. It was almost like hearing the teacher talking to Charlie Brown. You know somebody is saying something, but ??? So what we got the first (and last) time we activated the voice test was 9-1-1 flooded with panicked people asking "what was that message coming out of the speakers?" We went back to sound-only, even though pressing a button still could activate the PA through the radio. BTW, we used a steady single-tone that sounded way too much like a Vactor truck (got 9-1-1 calls about that, too), or got drowned out by other noise. A sweeping sound (wail) is far better for recognition in a number of environments to a number of different people with various hearing conditions.

60 Control is a neat place. I've visited it several times over the years and the Westchester folks have always been very good to me.

The Borough of Englewood Cliffs, across the river from upper Manhattan/ the Bronx, is having its problems with sirens.

 

[Confuzzled]

It was a good idea on paper, but the problem was that different sound frequencies travel different distances (it's not like the speed of light and radiowaves) and at a distance you would have echos (like radio "multipath") and only the lower frequency components could be heard.

That was one of the benefits of the Chrysler sirens. Depending on where you were, you could feel them as much as hear them.

If you were close enough, you could still feel the rumble five minutes after they shut down.

As far as actual firehouse sirens, the ones I remember were round with a cone shaped top. Our local one was manually activated by a toggle switch in the radio room, but it also had a mechanical timer for the noon activation. Didn't keep time very well and had to be reset every couple of months as well as for DST.

 

[wmetech1]

60 Control is a neat place. I've visited it several times over the years and the Westchester folks have always been very good to me.

Yeah they're great, never been there myself but they run the show here. Can't say enough about our dispatchers/coordinators.

The Borough of Englewood Cliffs, across the river from upper Manhattan/ the Bronx, is having its problems with sirens.

Unfortunate story, though the sad part is he has a legitimate reason for his whining/lawsuit, the bidding and contact policies are in place for a reason... :roll:

 

[W2NJS]

I grew up on the South Shore of Long Island, and our village had three firehouses. The "main" house had a coded horn that gave the approximate location of the alarm, another house had a siren that sounded six rounds for a general fire alarm, one round for a grass fire, and three rounds for a rescue call, but the third house had no external signal at all. The house with a siren was smack in the middle of a residential area and at the time no one would have ever thought to complain about the siren. I guess times might have changed by now, because it was fifty years ago that I moved away.

 

[902]

As far as actual firehouse sirens, the ones I remember were round with a cone shaped top.

We had two Federal Model 7 sirens in town just like the one in the link. Watching the Youtube video just sent the shivers right through me - I had this urge to toss on a pair of shoes, grab the HT and car keys, and run out of the house. That's what I would have been doing 20 years ago and wish I could be doing these days.

About the feeling the sound, it's probably a good explanation of why I can't hear anything above 4 kHz in one ear.

 

[902]

I grew up on the South Shore of Long Island, and our village had three firehouses. The "main" house had a coded horn that gave the approximate location of the alarm, another house had a siren that sounded six rounds for a general fire alarm, one round for a grass fire, and three rounds for a rescue call, but the third house had no external signal at all. The house with a siren was smack in the middle of a residential area and at the time no one would have ever thought to complain about the siren. I guess times might have changed by now, because it was fifty years ago that I moved away.

Ours was two rounds of 4 cycles for what we called a "10-31," or working fire or "10-34" smoke in the building calls and again for a second alarm. If you were tied up for the first round and you heard the second round, you'd drop what you were doing and it would be only behinds and elbows getting to the call. We didn't blow them for activated alarms. ambulance jobs, or emergency calls. We were already getting complaints in the 80s. The next town over had a few different sirens, the most distinctive being their Federal SD-10. When the wind was blowing just right, you could hear a town to the west with their Gamewell Diaphone horns.

Funniest thing I remember was a time when one of the relays got stuck in the next town over's siren box. The firehouse was across from a church. The parish priest was a Navy man in WW-II. When that SD-10 stayed locked up, he stopped mass and hurried the parishioners down to the basement because he thought it was an air raid. The police had to send a car to tell everyone it was okay to go upstairs. A sign of the times.

 

[doctordialtone]

Federal

We had two Federal Model 7 sirens in town just like the one in the link.

What? I didn't hear you.

Thanks for linking that. Pretty cool. That's about what we had in the town where I grew up in the 60's in CT. 4 Fire Companies - each had one. I could hear 3 of them clearly from the house over 3 miles away. I thought of it as a beehive.

Air Raid test was Saturdays at 11AM, and I can remember one Saturday in the midst of Cold War frenzy, 1st Grade, my cousin and I ran for our lives from the nearby woods, thinking it was "the big one".

I'll have to check out those other youtubes.

Thanks!

 

[Confuzzled]

Air Raid test was Saturdays at 11AM

I'll have to check out those other youtubes.

Back then (in a big city) they were 1PM every first Saturday of each month.

There are some .wav files out there of the Chrysler units, but they don't do justice to the real thing.

 

[c0untyb0y]

It's a point of contention in many places. I grew up in Perrysburg, Ny, about an hour south of Buffalo, and we had both the siren, and the Diaphone for coding the location, into the '70's. I've been away for a long time so I don't know how it is now..

I believe Catt Co still does the 1st Monday of every month "fire service alert test" where they tone out all the fire sirens in the county.

when I was a kid, I recall a time when my dad had just dropped me off at my grandparents. as he and I were getting out of the car, the fire siren blew. with no plectron handy, dad had to drive to the firehall (didn't have pagers back then, let alone text messages!) which luckily enough was virtually across the street. back when grandpa was chief (before my time) he had the fire phone in his house.

the fire department I am with now in Oneida Co silenced their noon whistle roughly a year plus ago. it used to be set off by a digital timer that only one or two guys knew how to program. every time the clocks were changed it would end up going off either a hour fast or slow until it could be changed. but it still goes off when we get toned out for a call, be it a lift assist or a structure fire, morning, noon, or night. it's actually debated at the station as to the legality of keeping it running, to reduce the department's liability when the apparatus leave the station in a hurry for calls.

 

[jmp883]

I'm all for the sirens still being used. I was a volunteer firefighter here in northern NJ for 20 years and am still an emergency services dispatcher with 21 years behind the microphone.

When I joined the fire department back in 1987 we didn't have pagers yet. All members were issued a Plectron base station receiver for alerting while at home but if you were outside the only way you knew you had a call is when you heard the fire siren blowing. I answered many calls because of the fire siren blowing the first 3 or 4 years I was on the deparetment. We finally got pagers in the early 1990's and, being on VHF-Lo at the time, really had no coverage problems with the pagers. However we kept the sirens in service 24/7. Within the last 5 years or so we switched to UHF and we are still having problems with our new UHF pagers. It's a good thing we kept the sirens in service, though their use is slightly limited now. They get activated on any fire department dispatch between 7am and 9pm. After 9pm they only get activated for a confirmed structure fire.

I can't really recall any push in my town to have the sirens totally silenced, and I hope they never are. It's nice to have overlapping technologies to ensure that the call gets out.

As an afterthought.....I still get officially reprimanded on a somewhat regular basis when I do the nightly pager test. Like I wrote above, we were issued Plectrons, so I was trained do to the nightly test as follows: "KDL-### to all ******* volunteer units. This is your nightly Plectron test for ##-##-####. Your test time is ##:##." When my PD Chief, Captain, or Lt. hear that I usually get a verbal reprimand, and sometimes a written one as well. The FD brass here couldn't care less whether I call them Plectrons or pagers. Go figure...... If that's all I ever get written up for in my career I can deal with that :lol:

 

[brndnstffrd]

The stupid courtesy light wakes up you people that are driving around on the phone or shaving or reading the paper to let you know that we are going to do something important. It could be your house or family member that we are going to help.

The horns are still good if your outside doing stuff and don't have your pager with you. Also the cellphone texts don't always come right over with the pager. Mine sometimes don't show up until 5 mins later after the tone goes out. People that whine about a firehorn shouldn't move next to a fire station. Just like people that move by the airport and then ***** about the noise.

You misunderstood my meaning. I was criticizing courtesy lights because i think that volunteers should be able to use sirens, in addition to lights. The way i see it, they are responding to the station using a courtesy light, to use a piece of apparatus for a code response. I would support it being a code response all the way, The same people, heading to the same emergency. Courtesy lights make no sense.

 

[Confuzzled]

The way i see it, they are responding to the station using a courtesy light, to use a piece of apparatus for a code response. I would support it being a code response all the way, The same people, heading to the same emergency.

HUGE difference in liability and insurability.

Most volunteers couldn't afford the financial consequences of a wreck while responding.

Our county is mixed, some departments allow lights, some don't.

But that's not what this thread is about.

 

[sfd119]

We still have our Fire Siren in use. It gets blown usually for structure fires and that's it...however it's up to the dispatcher. It has saved me once or twice...my pager died without me knowing it and I was outside and heard it.

County sets them off using our Paging channel, however, our station has a red button in the back that can be pressed to manually trigger it.

 

[elwood_blues]

My old company, and in fact both companies in town, stopped using them about 20 years ago. The sad part is that our radio systems have failed either partially or completely at least 4 times that I can remember. They don't utilize text paging. Then what?

I can remember one time while myself and another guy were standing by at the firehouse geared up and waiting for the inevtiable calls while a major T-Storm rolled thru.

A friend rolled up the the firehouse nd said "What the hell are you waiting for - why aren't you responding yet?"

Dispatch got knocked out, and we had an occupied school bus with a pole and wires down on it. Nobody knew it. Sadly, still to this day, there are no back up plans in place for when this happens.