Have you ever heard the old fire siren? Not the one that blares a warning to other motorists from the city fire trucks, the other siren. Have you ever heard the old siren that formerly wailed out over town at least once a day?
People regularly travel to the Pierce County Courthouse Annex on Nichols Street to vote, pay tag fees on their vehicles or to speak with people in the zoning office among other things. On the way, people regularly pass the big water tower with the bluepainted legs. Few if any notice the small blue thing that looks like a small chimney or steam whistle about halfway up the maintenance ladder. It can be hard to spot, a pierce of blue equipment on a blue girder against the backdrop of a blue sky.
That is the old fire siren that was once a vital part of the emergency warning network Pierce County relied upon until phones and later, computers and cell phones took over.
There were multiple locations from which the siren could be sounded, and there were a few different reasons citizens might hear it, though fire was most often the case. There was a switch in front of the old courthouse that could trigger it and the county jail also had one as well.
But when was it last sounded? Prompted by a reader inquiry, The Times sought to find out and was eventually directed to a repository of old fire department lore. According to Blackshear firefighter Johnnie Anderson, it was probably last heard in the mid-80s.
“I was there for the latter part of those days,” Anderson recalls.
At the time, the policy for firefighters was if you heard the siren, get to the fire station as fast as possible. The goal was to be there before the truck left. If firefighters arrived and the firetruck was already gone, you followed the water trail left by the truck. This was during the day. At night, the policy was to go outside and look for the red glow in the sky.
Nor was it just used for emergencies. Monday through Friday the siren would go off at noon, signaling midday to the town. It wasn’t an emergency if you heard it then. It was lunch time.
The public warning siren was maintained and run by the Public Works department. Back then, the Public Works director was also in charge of the fire department.
The old siren is one of the few remnants of an earlier time in the Blackshear Fire Department. The concrete slab by the historic jail across from city hall is all that remains of where the fire trucks were previously stationed.
The trucks were moved to their current location in the 1980s, which put them closer to the source of the old siren, but the signal’s days were numbered. With the rise of beepers, telephones became the preferred method of alerting firefighters to an emergency.
As to whether or not the unit is still functional, Anderson is skeptical.
“I doubt it. They probably don’t have any way to sound it now,” Anderson said.
So, if you happen to ever hear the siren, don’t panic. Maybe it is just lunch time.
