ROWLEY — The town's fire horn may become less frequent, but it's not going away.
In response to residents' questions about the frequency and necessity of the fire horn, fire Chief James Broderick said this week the horn serves a vital function as a second line of fire defense, and while reducing the number of blasts is possible, it's not in the town's best interest to retire the horn completely.
"We are required to have a secondary means of dispatching the alarm if the primary means becomes disabled," he wrote to selectmen. If the paging system is down, "the dispatch center would need to have the ability to sound the alarm."
The horn has been blowing from Town Hall's cupola since the early 1900s, and is typically tested each day at noon. Despite technological advances in the form of pagers and cell phones, there is nothing quite as effective as a horn blast to get firefighters on the scene of an emergency, Broderick said.
Rowley's mostly volunteer Fire Department, he noted, responds to calls from firefighters' homes — not from the Hammond Street station. While a few of the full-time firefighters have Nextel direct lines, he adds, the rest of the force use individual private cell phone carriers.
"There is no capability to 'group call' any of the firefighters using these phones," writes Broderick.
The pagers and the horn are all Rowley's got, he said, until the day it can afford and justify establishing its own 24-hour Fire Department. But in the meantime, Broderick said there are definitely ways to reduce the number of times the horn sounds, by initiating policies successfully being used in neighboring towns, for instance. He suggested the town consider blowing the horn only in the case of structure fires, automatic fire alarms, by direction of a chief officer of the Fire Department, and for mutual aid requests.
"This particular policy comes from the West Newbury Fire Department, and could be adopted by (Rowley) with little problem," Broderick says.
If the town were to adopt that policy, he adds, the horn would not sound in the case of trees or wires down, carbon monoxide or medical calls, or assists to the public.
"With the reduction of the use of the horn it should reduce by 50 percent the amount of times the horn sounds, and will reduce the chance of the horn blowing during the night hours," Broderick told selectmen.
Selectmen voted to support the chief's letter, which will be sent out to satisfy questions raised by Town Hall neighbor Kristopher Reynolds last week.
"We definitely want to keep the fire horn blowing," added selectmen Chairman Dave Petersen. "Homeland Security mandates we have some sort of alternate system."
Selectman Stuart Dalzell concurred, raising the specter of only two firefighters showing up to fight a fire because of dead batteries or cellular "dead spots", with no other means to bring out the cavalry. Selectman Jack Cook, a lifelong resident, agreed.
"We don't want to jeopardize the people of this town," said Cook. "That's what (the horn) is for."
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