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Siren
Jul 31, 2014 20:52:57 GMT 12
Post by baronbeeza on Jul 31, 2014 20:52:57 GMT 12
Do you think the fellow driving the white ute is deaf ? Actually he has a few other issues I noticed, driving on the wrong side of the road. He may get to be the driver for the second engine.
I just saw a Four Square advert featuring the local volunteer fire brigade...... it made me wonder just how many in NZ are aware of the siren. I also wonder what tourists make of it when these things burst into life.
I remember my father saying he was staying in a hotel on Whataroa many years back, the siren sounded so they all filed outside, as you do. For their curiosity they all got a seat on the fire engine as it raced upto the pub on the way to the fire. Well I guess that is where they gang press all the fit and hehmmmm 'able' men each time.
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Siren
Jul 31, 2014 21:03:13 GMT 12
Post by Dave Homewood on Jul 31, 2014 21:03:13 GMT 12
I reckon the white ute was driven by a volunteer.
I am curious about the fact that the camera was rolling on the station before the siren went off. Was it a drill and filmed for training purposes? Or did the camera person phone in a falsey to get their shot? Maybe he had the pager that alerts the vollies before the siren sounds.
We have the same siren here, it's on top of the Town Hall, and can be heard right across the whole town on a calm day. Our neighbour's dog always howls in exactly the same siren form when it sounds, he's funny.
I have a hell of a lot of admiration for the volunteers of the Fire Service who drop everything at work or at home, or get out of bed in the middle of the night in a storm, and sometimes several times in the same day or night, to run into harm's way of a massive fire, or a flood, or a natural disaster, or to cut people from cars, without any pay and little thanks. I think every single one of them deserves praise and awards.
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Siren
Jul 31, 2014 21:25:10 GMT 12
Post by Peter Lewis on Jul 31, 2014 21:25:10 GMT 12
I work quite a bit around Newmarket, in Auckland.
During the weekdays there are usually various sirens sounding off - alarms of several types, ambulances, fire engines and god knows what else. America comes to town.
I joked the other day that they could save time and trouble by just having one siren mounted up on a building somewhere and just turn it on at eight in the morning and let in run until turning it off at six at night.
It would save everyone needing to bring their own.
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Siren
Jul 31, 2014 21:37:13 GMT 12
Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jul 31, 2014 21:37:13 GMT 12
When I was a teenager just out of high school in the early 1970s, sirens were still REAL sirens (ie....no electronics or speakers), and a group of us managed to acquire (I cannot remember where from all these decades later) a small siren operated by a crank handle. It was a small siren about the size of the ones mounted under the bonnet of traffic cops' cars (police cars didn't have sirens), ambulances and fire engines. Somebody carved a wooden handle for it and attached the siren to the handle so you could hold the siren with one hand while cranking the crank handle with the other. Possibly it was originally off an old fire engine or something similar. Being lads of the larrikin age, we naturally used to get up to a heap of mischief with that siren. Fortunately we never got caught, as it was a serious offence to use a siren to cause other cars to pull over so one could go charging through. The siren eventually ended up amongst all the junk in my Dad's shed, although it disappeared at some point over the years. Perhaps my younger brother found it and got up to some similar mischief with it....who knows what happened to it? It was fun while it lasted though.
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Siren
Jul 31, 2014 23:26:20 GMT 12
Post by Bruce on Jul 31, 2014 23:26:20 GMT 12
At Cambridge, there is an older, retired volunteer who responds to every callout. His job is park and lock the firefighters cars once they are on their way. The level of per planning that goes into a speedy response is extremely impressive.
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 0:32:50 GMT 12
Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 1, 2014 0:32:50 GMT 12
I didn't know that Bruce about the chap who secures the cars. They certainly are very speedy to get on the go. I recall sitting with some mates in the prince Albert's "beer garden" one weekend when the siren went and we watched the vollies arrive and the engines leave. It was later we learned they were headed to the CoolPac disaster down the road at Tamahere where one of their own had been killed, Cambridge's Derek Lovell, and several other firefighters badly injured. Tragic.
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 0:34:07 GMT 12
Post by baronbeeza on Aug 1, 2014 0:34:07 GMT 12
Westport tests their sirens once a week, 5pm on a Wednesday I think. There are two, one atop a tower at the station and the second down the other end of town, almost stereophonic I guess.
My mother made a point of wisening us kids up. Get off the road when the sirens sound. It is not the fire engines that are the problem... the volunteers race to the station and from all directions. That is just the first wave. We then get the next lot that are too late to catch the engines so they drive (race) straight to the scene.
The idea of having someone move and park the cars etc certainly has merit.
I am not sure I have ever heard the town siren sound in any overseas location. It seems the town siren is commonplace in provincial NZ though.
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 0:40:22 GMT 12
Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 1, 2014 0:40:22 GMT 12
Our siren is tested at 7.00am every Monday morning.
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 0:41:11 GMT 12
Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 1, 2014 0:41:11 GMT 12
And the Air Force Base sirens used to sound 12.00pm every day. Although i can't recall if that included weekends?
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 0:43:22 GMT 12
Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Aug 1, 2014 0:43:22 GMT 12
When I was growing up in Hastings during the second-half of the 1950s and into the 1960s, you only heard the fire station siren sound if it was a really big fire somewhere. The full-time professional firefighters used to handle most callouts, but if it was a really large fire, then the big siren would sound to call in the volunteers. As we lived on Tomoana Road which was the route to Tomoana freezing works, Unilever food factory, Froxpax food factory, and several other large industries, often the big siren would sound, then the fire engines would come screaming along Tomoana Road heading in the direction of one of those big plants. That was also back during the era of the Dennis F8 fire engines in many provincial centres such as Hastings (as opposed to the considerably larger Dennis F12 fire engines in places such as Wellington), where there were nearly always firemen standing on the running board at the rear holding on. I imagine OSH would never allow that practise these days.
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 0:44:19 GMT 12
Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 1, 2014 0:44:19 GMT 12
It was always fun when the siren sounded at Wigram as our section was next to the fire section and you could see the engines flying out of the station. Sometimes they'd get a bit wobbly and end up cutting the corner onto the grass.
Of course you ex-airmen will remember the long-warbling siren was the one we never wanted to hear.
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 0:52:42 GMT 12
Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 1, 2014 0:52:42 GMT 12
My sister's ex-husband is a fire chief and used to tell some good stories. One thing that most people have no idea about is that firemen actually have full powers of arrest just like a police officer. He actually had call to make an arrest when they were trying to battle a house fire and some idiot member of the public took it upon himself to turn the pumps on the engine off stopping their water flow, several times!! There are some absolute idiots in this world, sadly.
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 0:54:43 GMT 12
Post by jonesy on Aug 1, 2014 0:54:43 GMT 12
Some towns are going away from sirens as they have outlived their usefulness. When I was a vollie in Tauranga we relied on pagers, as most guys lived out of earshot of the siren. Theres also some backlash from people who dont understand the need for them, and find them a bit of a pain when going off in the middle of the night! A mate of mine was a vollie in a small town and lived beneath the siren, he reckoned he would be out of bed and halfway out the door as the siren would start winding up!
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 0:55:00 GMT 12
Post by baronbeeza on Aug 1, 2014 0:55:00 GMT 12
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 9:30:57 GMT 12
Post by Andy Wright on Aug 1, 2014 9:30:57 GMT 12
When I was a vollie with Manjimup Fire & Rescue (Weat Oz) we used to test the siren every Sunday morning at about 10. Never had a complaint but being a small country town, it rarely got to the stage of going off on a call out as one of us usually made it, as we all had pagers, in time to answer the call prior to the automated system setting the siren off.
I did a couple of silly things driving to the station in the early hours of the morning. I lived on the edge of town off one of the streets that led out of town and was pretty quiet so even though it was only a two minute drive to the station, it was imperative I got there quicker (in my mind anyway!).
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 11:00:33 GMT 12
Post by phil82 on Aug 1, 2014 11:00:33 GMT 12
I've actually written a book on "Accidents and Incidents" .....and might get around to publishing it one day! A publisher of similar tomes once told me it is sufficiently unique to be of interest!
When 14 Sqn were at Tengah,there were two Snr Fmn on the strength, attached to the RAF of course for all duties. Afer every incident, domestic or aircraft, the RAF had a form which had to filled in giving all the details, and in the case of aircraft, a sketch. We had a 64 Sqn Javelin one day which had brake failure and left the runway and tried , but failed, to leap that huge Monsoon drain that ran the full length of the runway, but ended up straddling the ditch. Aircrew ran toward the 64 Sqn lines, literally a few yards away, but for us it was no big deal really. Javelins regularly did silly things! Seats made safe we left it for the lineys to sort out!
Later, RAF Cpl,sitting chewing on a pencil while filling in the accident report,looks up at me and asks, "Which way is East?" I point to East. "You sure about that" he asks? "Yep" I said, again pointing," The sun comes up in the East, that way, and sinks in the West, that way". Then I threw in North and South for added reassurance. More thoughtful chewing on the pencil, then another look at me: "Is that in every country then?"
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 11:42:27 GMT 12
Post by philip on Aug 1, 2014 11:42:27 GMT 12
In Huntly (my home town and still workplace) the siren still goes once every day at 12noon. It also goes when there is a fire callout continuously even though all the local volunteers have pagers.
Prior to the Waikato expressway being built we would expect it to go off almost every Sunday at 4pm, followed in later years by the air ambulance going over our house.
When the Huntly Power Station was getting built there were a lot of immigrant engineers including my girlfriend of the time's family from Zambia. The siren was exactly the same as the Zambian copper mine emergency siren and it would freak them out.
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Siren
Aug 1, 2014 15:55:44 GMT 12
Post by steveh on Aug 1, 2014 15:55:44 GMT 12
Those are just baby sirens, now this is a real siren. Nuclear air raid V8 Hemi powered relic from the cold war,out of Robbie Coltranes Planes Trains & Auotmobiles (or somethinglike that) Steve.
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Siren
Aug 2, 2014 11:29:13 GMT 12
Post by htbrst on Aug 2, 2014 11:29:13 GMT 12
There are moves afoot in one of the local towns to have their fire siren silenced for being too noisy under the resource management act: www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/10176336/Fire-station-ordered-to-silence-sirenI will say the siren is bloody reassuring to hear when you're the one who needs assistance - I was washing dishes a couple of weeks ago when suddenly the house shook followed by a large bang and light show - my first instinct was a big earthquake given how much the house shook, so it took a few seconds to realise the tractor I had vaguely noticed the headlights coming down the road had hit the overhead powerline leading to our house. It was pitch black outside, and we have large ditches either side of the road that can easily swallow a tractor; so while I rang the power company to get power turned off, the wife rang the fire department. Next step was getting outside for a quick look, and while I was doing that I could hear the fire siren in the background - so it was nice to know someone was on the way should I come across a live line accidentally. I moved one of the cars out to provide light, block road etc - only to find the culprit had driven off into the night! While no rescue needed, it was damn nice to have them come. The house didnt come out too well, as the meter box is in the centre of the house it had started to be pulled through the wall before the roof beam (and powerline) snapped where the line entered the house. The power company spent most the next day getting us back online, and it took a while to get the roof watertight again but its mostly all repaired now. Still no leads on who the culprit was though
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