Loud fire siren is retired

The area’s most intrusive fire siren has been silenced.

The radius alarm that sat atop a 50- foot utility pole adjacent to Mahopac Fire Department headquarters on Route 6 at Croton Falls Road was removed last week after residents of Mahopac Ridge and others residing within the area of the firehouse complained bitterly to both town and fire department officials that the siren, which was installed after the department’s new fire house opened two years ago, was louder and more annoying than the previous fire horn.

While local residents said their homes vibrated each time the alarm sounded, the siren was readily heard miles away including in Carmel, Brewster, Croton Falls, and—when the wind blew right— in Putnam Valley.

“It had to go,” said Brian Martin, who added: “Each time the alarm sounded our quality of life went down the drain.”

Michael Purdy, president of the Mahopac Fire Department, told the Courier the siren came down because “we are being responsible to our community. Our intentions were good, but they didn’t work out.”

Plans had originally called for the alarm system to be installed on the firehouse itself but the siren was erected on a pole north of the fire station away from homes.

Will another alarm system be installed?

Purdy said the fire department’s membership was undecided: “Perhaps the department will mount a system inside the cupola of the fire house that broadcasts a siren-like noise that will not bother the neighborhood.”

In the meantime, members of the Mahopac FD will be notified of fire calls by tones sounding on individual pagers carried by all emergency responders as well as on cell phones providing text messages dispatched through the Putnam 911 Center in Carmel.

—Eric Gross