The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
Town sirens and or pagers
I was recently driving through a town in Virginia when the towns fire siren went off and I thought, wow, thats a sound from the past.
Or is it?
How many of you Vollies still have sirens calling you to the station?
We don't have sirens in our area, alpha numeric pagers only, I for one would love to have the re introduction of a siren during daylight hours as I believe it would alert the rest of the area that their fire fighters will be driving to the station and are in action.
Now we are usually unseen, unknown and unapreciated. A lot of the inhabitants do not even know our department are volunteers.
What do you think, should the sirens still be used?
Or is it?
How many of you Vollies still have sirens calling you to the station?
We don't have sirens in our area, alpha numeric pagers only, I for one would love to have the re introduction of a siren during daylight hours as I believe it would alert the rest of the area that their fire fighters will be driving to the station and are in action.
Now we are usually unseen, unknown and unapreciated. A lot of the inhabitants do not even know our department are volunteers.
What do you think, should the sirens still be used?
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Jacob Whitten on
-
In the small town I live in on the Virginia/Carolina border, I can remember when I was little the siren went off 24 hours a day and if I was awake I would run to the scanner to see if the trucks would be coming by my house. Now, I'm 20 and when my pager goes off I go running to the building instead of the scanner. Our sirens (yes we have 2- one on the building and one on the water tower) still blow from about 6 AM to 10 PM. Sometimes ifs its a really bad call and the dispatcher gets excited, they'll set it off after 10.
-
Permalink Reply by blair4630 on
-
I think, in our area, with every firefighter having a minitor pager, and anyone wishing to, also having text messaging from dispatch simultaneously, that the whistle is obsolete. That being said, it is still used by almost every dept. I can think of in my county. It depends what it's set off for by dept. My dept. activates the siren for structure fires, vehicle accidents, and automatic fire alarms, maybe CO activation with priority symtpoms too.
I understand the point people make about people in the community being aware that firefighters are responding to the station so look out, but let's face it, they can't even "pull to the right and stop" when confronted with lights and sirens, so I don't think the siren has any impact. I certainly don't see any benefit when I respond after a siren activation.
-
Permalink Reply by Cory Fanale on
-
In the county were I live every dept. still has a siren but it all depends on the area were you live if the siren goes off at night. My dept. siren goes off 24 hours 7 days a week and we are also issued pagers since we are an rural dept. and members may not hear the siren. Our neighboring dept. is in the middle of the borough with high residential living so the siren does not go off from the hours of 11 pm to 6 am.
(nothing like a siren piercing the quietness of the early morning hours to get you moving!)
-
Permalink Reply by Kevin Beahn on
-
My Company and all Companies and departments (all volunteer) still use sirens to call use to the station as well as a pager system......... We first get the dispatch on our pagers twice and then the 911 center (KEG 594) rings our siren
they also do a group siren test every Wednesday at noon and every Saturday individual siren tests for each company/department....
i personally think the siren and pager system is very effective... and i enjoy that we still use both
-
Permalink Reply by Ron King (Fire Chief) on
-
I miss our siren so much! It would always give you that proud feeling of being a firefighter. We still have it on our building but it sleeps now.
-
-
You would think people would start complaining by now!!
-
Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on
-
We have both pagers and a Siren....it is almost a tradition in our town for the Siren to go off for Fire/EMS calls....it used to be a joke (old days) Siren goes off Mothers get their kids off the streets....LOL
-
Permalink Reply by Adam Gillis on
-
our siren works when we get dispacted off the right tower and the siren tones are on the right tower but i live to far away from my firehouse to here it go off for a call. but westill have both pagers and the siren
-
Permalink Reply by Paul Werner on
-
personally, i think sirens are less effective than pagers. In our department, the majority of the firefighters live a couple miles away from the station. Therefore, they wouldnt be able to hear it. And on another thought, if we were to have a siren, all of the neighbors of the fire station would be screaming at us to disconnect the power, they already yell when we roll out of the station and accidently bump the q. lol We use motorola minitor V pagers and everybody likes them and has had no problems with them. So i guess in my area the pagers work better than sirens and they save the department the grief of the neighbors
-
-
Like I said before, we have 2 sirens, or overheads as their referred to in our area, that goes off mostly during the day. Obviously we also have pagers, but when the wind is calm you can hear the overhead for about 5, almost 6 miles. This is nice during hunting season, cause I don't carry my pager but if I hear the overhead twice, I know its a second alarm and I need to get my butt to the building! And maybe it's just me, but I feel like when you pull up to the building and jump out of your vehicle and that overhead is screaming, it kicks you into high gear!
-
Permalink Reply by Loyd Dittfurth on
-
I agree completely after we got pagers when i was still in school we were allowed to go if we heard the siren (mainly because a few abused the privledge and just left and said the pager went off when it didnt) i could run a 3.9 40 yard dash but i KNOW that a few times i ran the 5 blocks from the school and got into the truck before the guy that set the sirens off made it from one end of the building to the other
oh and we have 1 central siren and 6 satilites surrounding the out side of town for the ranchers to hear
More than one occasion of 2 guys riding to the station on horses when were leaving
© 2024 Created by Firefighter Nation WebChief.
Powered by
