The Sewickley fire horn scares young children and disrupts an otherwise peaceful town setting. 

I grew up in Sewickley and, over time, learned to tolerate the fire horn. However, today I realized something had to change. I was walking my two young children, near the firehouse, when the horn went off. Both children simultaneously burst into tears. 

As an Air Force combat veteran who sat many alert shifts in Afghanistan I can sympathize with the need for quick and accurate communication in an emergency. At Bagram Air Base we communicated an alert launch of our fighter jets with a handheld air horn, or, alternatively, with a radio. There was no need to awake a sleeping base for an emergency we could handle without everyone's help.

The same rule ought to apply to our fire horn. Unless there is a need for the whole town to pitch in with buckets of water, a handheld air horn should be sufficient. If some firemen are out of range of the air horn then surely a beeper will suffice. 

If we get enough signatures on this petition we should be able to encourage the borough to adopt a solution that is less disruptive to the town and more sympathetic to families with young children.