The Town of Carmel Planning Board on Wednesday revisits the matter of the noise and location of the outdoor siren at the new, $5.7 million Mahopac firehouse property on Croton Falls Road. Neighbors complain of the noise and town officials have stated the location doesn't conform with approved plans. Here is a Community View by a local resident who lives less than a football field away from the siren.
In just about every municipality where the population is dense the use of air-raid sirens to muster volunteers has been abandoned due to health, well-being and quality-of-life issues, but not in Mahopac. Members of the Mahopac Volunteer Fire Department feel they are entitled to disrupt our lives and jeopardize our health and well being because they are volunteers. They say the siren system is necessary to muster volunteers whose cell phones, pagers, radios are inoperable or for volunteers who live at great distance. Well, they don't seem to have any trouble reaching them after 8 p.m. without an air raid siren! So what's the difference? How come they have to ruin our lives between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.? After that, do all the pagers, beepers and cell phones start working in the difficult areas? Of course not. The technology is in place and used to compensate for these "black out" - otherwise, no fire calls could be answered after 8 p.m.
At the last planning board meeting, at least 20 residents and their families who live in the area informed the Mahopac Fire Chief James Grundman of their discontent only to be brushed off. The reason for the meeting was to look into relocating the culprit siren. The volunteers had told us the siren would face Route 6 and be shielded in the copula of the firehouse. They lead us to believe that the dangerous noise issue would be resolved for the better. Well, it wasn't shielded in the copula, it doesn't face Route 6 (it radiates in a circle) and it is a couple of hundred feet closer to our neighborhood on a telephone pole. The situation has become intolerable.
The chief later decided to run his own decibel test of the siren and further desecrate our peaceful neighborhood by blowing the air raid siren over and over again to measure the decibel level. Is he an audio expert? An ear doctor? Does he really think that we would consider his test and results as impartial or valid for that matter? Well, guess what, nobody's that stupid.
We also have to be jarred from our peace and quiet almost every weekend morning. (Which is when most taxpayers are trying to get some extra needed rest from the work week.) Why? Because, for example, someone at the senior center has burned some toast, requiring fire department response and sounding of the siren. So I guess it makes sense that the whole town should know that someone burned the toast, regardless of whose hearing is destroyed and whose blood pressure has been increased.
Yes, destroyed hearing! One of our neighbors at the earlier planning board meeting submitted the standard installation manual for that model siren; the entire book is riddled with federal government warnings about hearing loss. I can't imagine what it is doing to anyone who is walking on the nearby bike path. The path is directly under the air raid siren. Makes you wonder how many lawsuits that could generate.
Well, in the end we have been left with no peace, angry residents, festering resentment and potential lawsuits. For what? And to what end? Does the whole town need to be alerted for every cat in a tree? Fender bender? Burnt toast? I guess it's OK! Most people don't mind - so long as the siren doesn't end up in their back yard.
Shouldn't the siren be located at the highest point in town where everyone would be able to hear it and not at the lowest point in town? It should be located at the top of Mt. Hope Road. It's one of the highest points in town. But you will never see it moved to there; that's where the volunteer fire chief lives and he doesn't want it in his neighborhood either!
The writer, from Mahopac, lives on See Avenue "within 200 feet" of the siren.
