Greetings,

Whitesboro Fire Department's fire house (171 Oriskany St. Whitesboro NY, 13492) is equipped with a siren/horn for volunteers that goes off 24/7. It is over 100 decibels from my house and consists of a series of 8 total horn notifications. Sometimes it will go off at 4AM which is unreasonable. It wakes me up and im sure several other residents. If you Google map the firehouse address you will see it is surrounded by several residental houses. Some in close proximity. The horn is extremely loud, disruptive and abrupt.

It is 2021, firehouse sirens should be obsolete. If the fire department wants to keep using them atleast have a curfew limiting the hours of usage. Especially usage on Sundays. A curfew is a reasonable solution that could most likely appease all. It is simply a quality of life issue. There are many less intrusive communication options that are available to choose from that are either as effective or more effective than an old siren, and the Whiteboro Fire Department needs to adopt changes for the peace of our residents.

There are many articles and petitions throughout New York State regarding noise pollution from fire departments using house sirens to notify volunteers. Some of the articles go back to the 1990s. The fire department heads argue that cell phones and pagers are unreliable compared to the alarm. They also argue that the siren/horn is a tradition.

Attached is a link to a recent article regarding the Queensbury Fire Department.   ( Queensbury, NY). The article discusses that the Queensbury firehouse siren was recently repaired after being out of service for 7 years. During the 7 years of the siren being out service, the fire department had a 100% response rate. A well put quote from the article “We want this not to be a vote against our volunteers but a vote for our quality of life in our neighborhood."

Another argument is that the volunteers may miss the call or notification because they do not have their phone on them. Again,  it is 2021, it is safe to say that everyone knowadays has a cell phone and has it with them 99% of the time.  A beneficial part of having a cell phone for emergency notification is that the volunteers can be provided with an address to respond directly to the emergency in lieu of responding to the fire house first.

I would also question how many volunteers actually reside close enough to hear the firehouse horn?

In conclusion, I cannot be the only one that feels this way about alarm. There is some middle ground to resolving this issue but the bottom line it is a quality of life issue!