The following article was reprinted in its entirety from the Friday July 27, 1956 edition of The News Chronicle.
OLD BORO SIREN TO RETIRE SOON
There was a bit of kidding around the Vigilant Hose Company firehouse recently when the smoke eaters roared off to extinguish a liquor truck fire in Shippensburg. Be it known that all the boys returned perfectly sober.
The blaze was one for Ripley. No damage was reported by the trucker but the fire siren was damaged. It was stuck, as you remember.
With the alarm blasting away from atop the town hall, Ralph Naugle, Glen Heberlig and Charles Cover had an ear splitting time inside the building trying to receive short wave civil defense messages over the radio. They were listening for instructions to blow the siren for a CD alert. The radio crew was about ready to call out the marines. The situation was getting out of hand.
Somehow the old siren which should have been retired from municipal service long ago was stopped. If anything is seriously wrong with the siren, it’s just too bad. They don’t make parts for the old timer any more.
Some of the confusion connected with the sounding of borough sirens may be ended soon with the installation of a new coded fire alarm horn. Coded signals will be sounded for locations of fires and also civil defense alerts.
6 comments:
marines are over rated... a phone call to the local militia prob would have been enough
Cool post Brad!
TJ
Hey Brad,
Don't you have a copy of the Boro Alarm Code. Post it for the guys to see. I don't think there are to many of us left that use to respond to air horn codes. This is an interesting part of our history. I remember the incident of todays post.
C.W.
Hey!!
What can I say, I for got to add the word, "not" to my message above. Not many of us left.
C.W.
The horn would get stuck too. It didn't like cold weather.
RB
I have a copy of the old alarm code sheet. It was cool as a kid to hear the blasts and run inside to look at the sheet.
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