Dispute over Hempfield Township fire siren rekindles

A dispute over a fire siren in Hempfield has been reignited.

A resident of the West Point neighborhood has asked township supervisors that the length of time the siren sounds at the fire department near his home be reduced from one minute to 30 seconds.

“You have the control to cut this siren back,” Rich Janesko of New Haven Drive told supervisors during a recent meeting.

The request rekindled a controversy in 2008 when several West Point residents called the siren a public nuisance and health hazard. Janesko and other residents said the wail of the siren was too loud and too long.

Later that year, the township and the West Point Volunteer Fire Department reached an agreement that called for supervisors to withhold $5,000 of the department's $15,000 annual allocation to purchase and install a new fire siren.

Still, residents continued to complain that the new siren was sounding longer and more frequently than before.

In September 2010, supervisors voted to purchase and install a control system that would reduce the siren from two minutes to one in response to growing tension between residents and the volunteer fire department.

Now, Janesko wants the siren's length to be reduced even further, citing potential hearing loss for those in the neighborhood and the disruption each alarm causes.

“These sirens are antiquated,” he told supervisors. “You have pagers, phones. Once that siren goes off, it doesn't tell them where to go.”

Assistant Township Manager Bruce Beitel said during the meeting that it would be up to the board of supervisors to make any changes.

“The siren goes off just to notify of every call that department is on,” Beitel said. “That's part of the activation process.”

Supervisors plan to discuss the issue at their work session later this month. In the interim, Supervisor Doug Weimer said, township officials will investigate whether the siren is operating properly.

A 2009 agreement between the township and fire department states that the siren should be set at 92 decibels and run for four cycles of 15 seconds each, Weimer said.

West Point Fire Chief Rex Baughman said the siren is important because “it lets the community know that there will be firetrucks ... responding to the calls.”

“The siren is not ours,” Baughman said. “We do not control when it goes off.”

Westmoreland 911 activates departments' sirens for calls. Other methods of notifying firefighters of an emergency response include cellphones and pagers, but those sometimes fail, said Greg Saunders, president of the Hempfield Fire Chiefs Association.

“The sirens ... let the people know what's going on,” Saunders said. “To me, it's a very important thing to let the town know.”

A recurring complaint from Janesko during the meeting last month and from other residents in the past is that firefighters don't always show up at the West Point station when the siren sounds.

Saunders and Baughman said that sometimes an emergency response is canceled when a call turns out to be a false alarm or not as many responders are needed.

West Point resident Bill Artman said that the siren needs to be shut off.

“This is a world of technology now,” he said. “I just don't know why they have them.”

Renatta Signorini is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 724-837-5374 or rsignorini@tribweb.com.