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| Photo by Ryan Morrill The new siren is bolted into place at the station. |
The Surf City Volunteer Fire Co. and EMS siren is back in action after being out of commission for about five months. The new siren, which was donated by the Marmora Volunteer Fire Co. in Upper Township, was installed last Thursday with assistance from the Beach Haven and High Point volunteer fire companies and a crew from Alan’s Electric in Manahawkin as well as several Surf City firefighters.
“It was quite a process,” said Michael Wolfschmidt, Surf City fire chief.
The group worked off the platform of Beach Haven’s tower truck to cut off the base of the old siren, which was “extremely rusted,” he stated. High Point’s ladder truck was then used to lift the old siren to the ground and raise the new one, which was bolted into place and rewired.
Wolfschmidt gave “a big thank you” to Adam and Amos of Alan’s Electric, who “did an outstanding job.”
The siren, made by Federal Signal, which is the same model as Surf City’s former siren, was refurbished by Wolfschmidt’s brother, Andy, who is also a member of the local department. It has been painted a customary red color since red demonstrates “courage and valor” in the fire service, the chief said.
“I am very proud and happy to have the siren back,” Wolfschmidt stated. “It is truly a time-tested method of alerting our volunteers, especially in our unique coastal community. It was a time-consuming project, which involved a lot of hard work from many people. But we did it together with great teamwork. It’s been a busy year so far with many projects to improve the fire company, and I am very proud and thankful for everyone’s hard work and dedication to our organization.”
Public donations for the siren, received after Wolfschmidt made a Facebook post in May about its unexpected demise due to damage from the area’s salt air environment, will be used to offset the cost of hiring an electrician. Wolfschmidt said he didn’t know how much that will cost since he hadn’t yet received the bill. Any money left over will go toward professionally maintaining the siren each year to prolong its use.
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| Photo by Ryan Morrill Crews cut off the base of the old siren. |
Paul Hoster, president of the Marmora Fire Co., who’s been an active firefighter with the department for 31 years, reached out to Wolfschmidt after reading his post, which was shared by a Washington Township firefighter through the SJFiretalk Facebook page.
“I read Facebook a lot,” Hoster said. “It’s quite a useful medium. We have 2,000 members in SJFiretalk, so there’s a lot of potential people that can find things out and put up for the other people to see.”
The Marmora Fire Co., which serves Beesleys Point, Marmora and a portion of Palermo as well as an 8-mile stretch of the Garden State Parkway, took its three sirens out of service a couple of years ago when they became a maintenance issue.
“We were constantly fixing them,” said Hoster.
“Plus the people always grumbled about them,” he added, noting the members tried not to use the sirens after 10 p.m. “The noon whistle everybody was used to, but it just got to a point with the maintenance on them and so forth that we decided not to bother with them.”
The Marmora Fire Co., which usually has at least 50 active members, uses an Active911 app that shows members where the call is on a map using GPS, “which is a nice feature,” said Hoster. The app also shows how many members are responding so that the chief can have a head count and make decisions on whether he needs additional manpower, he explained.
“We don’t use them (sirens). In our area, our pagers and our cell phones all seem to work pretty well for us,” Hoster said, noting the company used to utilize Plectron scanners, which are basically one-channel receivers that were plugged into a wall at each of the members’ homes. “We just had them sitting there, but we knew the sirens worked when we took them down, so we offered them to Surf City. The company voted unanimously to give it to them. We donated everything we had for it.”
In an effort to be courteous to those who live near the Surf City fire station, Wolfschmidt has decided to decrease the number of cycles when members are notified of a fire call from five to three. However, he said the department is still trying to figure out how to make the electronic adjustment since the individual who set up the original system passed away last year.
“We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding while we learn how to make that change,” said Wolfschmidt.
The Surf City department normally activates the siren, which was last replaced in 2004, for all fire and rescue calls, though it is not used for emergency medical calls. The siren is vital to the department for assembling firefighters to the station for urgent situations, Wolfschmidt said. Although the fire company also uses electronic paging equipment and a smartphone app to notify members of calls, the gear is not always dependable, he added.
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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