Description

The fire horn is absolutely ridiculous! It goes off at all hours and waking those of us who live downtown from our sleep and drones on and on. It is simply unacceptable! I understand that this is a long-standing tradition for Geneva's fire departments, but it is an outdated technology and makes living downtown miserable. The fact that we have all survived periods of time when the horn was not functioning is proof that it is NOT a necessary part of modern fire protection! We have cellular technology, pagers, dispatchers, radios, etc., etc. We do not need to count the number of blows that the horn sounds to locate an emergency! Surely the police department manages to respond to calls without their own horn, as does EMS!! It is time that the city and the fire departments acknowledge that this is as much a nuisance to city living in Geneva as dilapidated houses and uncollected trash. Discontinue the use of this outmoded technology immediately OR prove to us exactly why this must go on as it has!! Tradition and history are not sufficient reasons. I'm sick of the noise! And I am NOT the only one!!

Update: I have since googled this very issue and see it is a perennial problem that has not been satisfactorily resolved despite plenty of public outcry. That is unacceptable to me! In the almost ten years that I have lived in this city at several different downtown locations, I have had to put up with this noise. As a renter, I felt I didn't have much power to effect change nor did I feel like it was worth a fight since I would eventually leave. I have since purchased a house practically down the street from this horn. If the issue remains unresolved and the city insists on ignoring the complaints of its citizens and deferring to ignorant and untested hypothetical arguments, my house will go back on the market. I will move someplace where reason and modern technology lead and where the citizens have a right to peace and quiet. If there is a wide scale power outage or a cell tower failure or some other circumstance which warrants a return to the technology of yesterday, fine. That would be tolerable. But this horn has sounded no less than three times in the past two days at unreasonable (sleeping) hours. Do we really have that many active fires? Is it really a problem for our firemen to locate an emergency? If so, then let's revisit the tax dollars that are spent on the other communication systems I KNOW they ACTUALLY depend on. I have yet to see a fireman about town stopped in his tracks counting horn blares to figure out where he's supposed to go. It's utter nonsense!