Worth of Pennsylvania Firehouse Sirens amid New Technology

STROUDSBURG, Pa. (AP) – Are fire sirens still necessary now that volunteer firefighters can be alerted via cellphone text messages and pagers?

It depends on whom you ask.

Some Monroe County residents who live near fire sirens take issue with how loud they are when they sound emergency alerts.

“It’s a pain, but you get used to it,” said Mary Wambold, who lives near the Jackson Township firehouse on Route 715 in Reeders. “We’ve been here 11 years. It goes off all hours of the day and night.”

The siren at the Stroud Township firehouse on North Fifth Street doesn’t bother neighbor Coleen Ensley.

“Maybe it’s because I’m from the city,” Ensley joked. “Besides, I’m not always home.”

A VESTIGE OF PRE-PAGER DAYS

Monroe County 911 Director Gary Hoffman said fire sirens were the only means of alert for local volunteer firefighters up until the 1980s, when firefighters started wearing home alert boxes on their belts.

“They were cumbersome to wear because they were the size of walkie-talkies,” Hoffman said. “Now, we have cellphones and pagers. People have different opinions about how necessary community sirens still are.

“Some fire companies may find their sirens obsolete, while other companies see sirens as tradition and a way to remind residents that they have fire companies,” he said. “Some communities use their sirens as a tornado warning. Those communities concerned about the loudness of their sirens can maybe change how long they blow when they sound or have them go off only during the daytime. Some of the newer sirens can be programmed.”

The issue was stirred up recently when a Polk Township resident who lives near the Polk Township firehouse complained to township supervisors about how frequently the siren sounds and how loud it is.

SIRENS STILL POPULAR

Though all of Monroe County’s volunteer firefighters now have cellphones or pagers, most of the county’s fire companies still use their sirens.

“We still use ours,” said Jackson Township firefighter Tim Fisher. “Cellphones and pagers are good, but you can’t always hear them. You can always hear the siren.”

Pocono Summit Fire Company likewise has no plans to take its siren out of service at this time.

“We haven’t gotten very many complaints from residents about our siren,” Pocono Summit Fire Chief George Talmadge said.

Acme Hose Co., which covers East Stroudsburg Borough, removed its siren after relocating from its recently sold former firehouse on Washington Street, but plans to put the siren back in service at its current Chestnut Street firehouse or on another building not in a residential area.

“We want to keep it in service because it does serve to alert the public,” Acme Hose Fire Chief Larry Bunting said. “We’re talking to the borough about maybe not having the siren sound between midnight and 6 a.m. or not having it sound off as long when it does go off.”

TURNING IT OFF

Coolbaugh Township Fire Company turned its siren off several years ago.

“It was costing us a lot to have it blow, since sirens run on electric power with emergency backup generators,” Coolbaugh Fire Chief John Zwally said. “I do miss it because it was tradition. It alerted the residents so that they knew they could expect to see fire trucks on the road and be courteous so that the trucks could get to scenes quicker.”

Marshalls Creek Fire Company hasn’t used its siren in almost 10 years, Chief Joseph Quaresimo said.

“We answer about 1,800 to 2,300 calls a year, and it was going off five to 10 times a day,” Quaresimo said. “We took a lot into consideration before we put our siren out of service. We found we have enough manpower to where we no longer need a siren.”

Whether firefighters rely on sirens or just cellphones and pagers, Quaresimo said residents who’ve moved here from cities should remember that fire companies in Monroe and other mostly rural counties consist 100 percent of unpaid volunteers.

This means firehouses aren’t staffed around the clock like paid fire departments in more urban areas.

It takes time for volunteers to leave their jobs or homes to get to the firehouse and then to the scene.

“The other thing to consider is we’re in a mountainous area where cellphone signals can get blocked, so we may not always get text-message or page alerts,” Quaresimo said. “Plus, we can’t always hear our cells or pagers when we’re at our jobs.”

Guy Miller, director of the Monroe County Office of Emergency Management and a former firefighter himself, personally believes sirens have become a thing of the past.

“That’s unless we can get a county-wide uniform system in place where the siren alerts differently for a fire than it does for a severe storm or another type of emergency,” Miller said.

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Information from: Pocono Record, http://www.poconorecord.com/