Monsey Fire shuts down the siren.......

[JohnnyOV 2]

So anyone, at anytime, can stroll by your front door and activate your siren?

Anyone at any time can pull a City pull box, fire alarm pull station, make a false 911 call....

[x129K 1,393]

Curious why you approve its use for fire, but not EMS calls?

Only because the frequency of EMS calls over fires. If our house whistle blew for all ems calls - it would go off ALOT, and quickly grown on people's nerves, especially at night....

It has nothing to do with the potential severity of the cvall.

[INIT915 1,119]

Only because the frequency of EMS calls over fires. If our house whistle blew for all ems calls - it would go off ALOT, and quickly grown on people's nerves, especially at night....

It has nothing to do with the potential severity of the cvall.

I understand your position. My counter argument would be, are EMS calls a lower priority, therefore deserving of less precedence in notifications? The mere fact that there are less fire calls, to me, should have no bearing on the urgency which the volunteers are notified. If anything, I would almost argue just the opposite.

[INIT915 1,119]

Anyone at any time can pull a City pull box, fire alarm pull station, make a false 911 call....

I understand that, but pulling a city alarm box doesn't trigger a siren.

[x129K 1,393]

I understand your position. My counter argument would be, are EMS calls a lower priority, therefore deserving of less precedence in notifications? The mere fact that there are less fire calls, to me, should have no bearing on the urgency which the volunteers are notified. If anything, I would almost argue just the opposite.

EMS is handled by a commercial in my town.

I understand that, but pulling a city alarm box doesn't trigger a siren.

It actually triggers a few..lol

Edited May 13, 2011 by Bullseye

[x635 4,066]

Monsey fire dept. begins sounding its horn again

Jul 15, 2011

Written by Steve Lieberman

Rockland County, New York

MONSEY — The fire department horn calling volunteers to duty sounded for the first time Thursday night since the fire commissioners turned off the warning system in April.

http://www.lohud.com/article/20110715/NEWS03/107150365/Monsey-fire-dept-begins-sounding-its-horn-again?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage

[spin_the_wheel 460]

I understand that, but pulling a city alarm box doesn't trigger a siren.

But in most Volunteer Depts with "Boxes" street or on the firehouse, when it is pulled it sets off the sirens and/or horn code to the box location.

Box 1-2-3 Main street and Fulton street. There are some Depts with this system still in place New Hyde Park, Bellerose Terrace and Bellerose village in Nassau County. Nyack and Haverstraw in Rockland come to mind.

Boy times have changed, and many communities as well, I remember a time wayyy back, when some Depts gave out the box code locations, on calendars, little booklets or 11x14 cards BECAUSE the residents WANTED to count the horn blasts and read the box/fire location.

Edited July 16, 2011 by spin_the_wheel

[Reliance 29]

We used to have a siren/whistle that would sound the box number for an alarm for the town. It was taken out aboput 30 years ago when pagers came on stream because the general public would count the box number that was blowing and get their before the paid crew and/or volunteers and clog the street and the fire apparatus and firefighters could not get close to the scene.

[PFDRes47cue 653]

I am a million percent PRO-house siren, but I think activating it for EMS calls is REDICULOUS! No wonder neighbors complain!

Curious why you approve its use for fire, but not EMS calls?

Only because the frequency of EMS calls over fires. If our house whistle blew for all ems calls - it would go off ALOT, and quickly grown on people's nerves, especially at night....

It has nothing to do with the potential severity of the cvall.

I understand your position. My counter argument would be, are EMS calls a lower priority, therefore deserving of less precedence in notifications? The mere fact that there are less fire calls, to me, should have no bearing on the urgency which the volunteers are notified. If anything, I would almost argue just the opposite.

My reason for not wanting sirens to go off for EMS calls is based on the poor state of volunteer EMS(GENERAL STATEMENT NOT REFLECTING ANY DEPARTMENTS OR AGENCIES) in our area. Anyone who hears EMS runs go out around the county, knows that agencies/departments are getting toned out more than once for most calls. So if you have an agency that does 1000 calls/year but gets toned out 3 times/call, then the siren is goign off 3000 times a year and 3 times in a matter of minutes. Fire calls on the other hand are usually toned out only once.

[PFDRes47cue 653]

We used to have a siren/whistle that would sound the box number for an alarm for the town. It was taken out aboput 30 years ago when pagers came on stream because the general public would count the box number that was blowing and get their before the paid crew and/or volunteers and clog the street and the fire apparatus and firefighters could not get close to the scene.

Should have made a push to sign all of these "buffs" up!

[Remember585 815]

Heres a better thing to think about. What if the horn is set off by tones? Ones that I could think of are Montrose, Buchanan, and Verplanck. These three departments have one tone for the house siren and one for the pagers.

So if the pager system is "down", and by down I mean the radio tower went down, then the siren wouldn't work either...

Not 100% true. Using the above mentioned departments as an example, if their primary tower (Hen Hud HS) is down, they will be dispatched from a backup tower (Croton, Peekskill or Mohegan) from a further distance. The signal strength may not be strong enough to open pagers as well as the normal tower does, but the house sirens usually have an antenna on the firehouse which works better than the antennas inside our pagers.

They're not the only ones with tone-activated sirens. Almost every FD that has a siren now has a tone activated controller. This is why most departments get two different tones when they're paged out (one for the pagers, the other for the siren/horn).