Personal Note: Well, that was something else.

[nebroadwe]

Last night the town fire siren went off at about 1:00 am, waking me up just enough to regret living next door to the station but not quite enough to do anything about it (like say a prayer for the firefighters or sell my house and move). What did wake me up were the red-white-and-blue lights outside my windows and the person calling, "Officer! Officer! Over here!" I fumbled on my glasses and opened the shades to discover two police cars and a fire truck in the parking lot, putting out what seemed to be a small, smoky conflagration in one of the dumpsters over the way. I couldn't quite make out the scene (there's a pine tree between me and the dumpsters, for whose presence I am usually quite grateful), but they seemed to have it well under control. Not being in a mood to rubberneck, I adjusted my shades to keep the flashing lights from dancing on my ceiling and went back to sleep. Nothing left this morning but a charred-looking dumpster. Interesting times, eh?

Comments

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

Oh WOW. We live a couple blocks from the police station, so it's not unusual to wake up to sirens but I couldn't IMAGINE living directly next door to the fire station.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

The new windows have helped damp the noise quite a bit, but it's still extremely, um, audible. Fortunately they don't run the siren at night very often.

And, on the up side, their response time to my house (should I, God forbid, ever need them) would be fabulous. They could practically open their back windows and point the hoses from inside the station. :-)

(I am occasionally wont to wonder if there's a polite way to ask, in this age of the pager and the cell phone, why they still use the siren. So far I haven't figured out a way to do it, though ...)