Fire Sirens

I can't wait to live somewhere that's not right across the street from a firehouse. Prospect Park has a siren that cycles up to it's highest point and then stay there for like a minute. What's even better than that? The fact that they pretty much never get out on the first dispatch during the day. That means that I get to listen to a minute of ear piercing siren noise, then have 2 minutes of quiet, and then 1 more minute of ear piercing siren noise. Super.

You know what makes it even better, though? None of that noise is really necessary! That's right. You see, back in the day, fire sirens were made so that when there was an emergency, all of the volunteer firemen in the town could hear the siren sounding and know that they should go to the firehouse. Nowadays, though, everyone has a pager on their belt. When there's a dispatch, the pager goes off. Novel concept. And now the pager even tells the wearer the address and the nature of the dispatch. (Fire alarm, gas leak, etc.)

S0 - here's the catch 22. Let's say there's a call for a fire alarm. The siren and pagers go off simultaneously. Joe Fireman stops what he's doing, looks at the pager and sees that it says, "123 Street Lane - Automatic Fire Alarm". He figures that he doesn't need to go for something as simple as a fire alarm, so he goes back to what he's doing. Unfortunately, so does everyone else - they all figure that somebody else will take care of the garbage. The three minutes allowed for a response pass and the call is dispatched again. The siren and pagers go off again. Joe Fireman looks at his pager, sees it's the same call and realizes that nobody else showed up, so now he finally goes to the firehouse to respond to the call. Perfect.

At this point I could go off into a tangent about how every tiny little town having it's own firehouse is fully unnecessary and how this whole mess could be avoided if they'd just regionalize the fire departments and hire paid staff.... but I digress.