No. 49, August 2005
Neighbors gain ground on emergency horns, sirens
by Tom Carter
The campaign to quell the horrific siren
and air-horn noise that emergency vehicles make at all hours
tearing down Hyde Street solidified last month when an abatement
committee was created to work with Supervisor Chris Daly.
But it came after Daly’s office took some heat about
being slow off the block to embrace the problem.
An ambulance and this car collided at
O’Farrell and Hyde, July 28, at 10 p.m.Photo
credit: Sirensinsf
 |
At issue is southbound SFFD Battalion 3 trucks from Post Street
responding to emergency calls South of Market. Their constant
and numbing blasts have jarred the Tenderloin into action.
Indeed, Operations Chief Richard Kochevar told a special forum
on the topic June 14 that in the corridor there were 46 Code
3 calls daily in April that required visible and audible alerts
from trucks. Sirens and stentorian air horns warn vehicles
out of their way. Kochevar said 70% of the calls are medical,
not fire-related.
The sirens were to be a short community
update item on the July 12 agenda of the Alliance for a Better
District 6, held at the Tenderloin Police Station. Co-President
Michael Nulty expected to find a volunteer action committee
that night in the wake of the aforementioned forum he had
organized the month before. Instead, he found a persistently
inquisitive and self-described “hired
gun” from Daly’s office, James Keyes, who seemed
new to the subject.
Keyes asked Assistant Fire Chief John Lo a passel of questions
regarding the frequency of truck trips down Jones, call records
over six months, possible rerouting, and if the department
was studying how the noise it creates impacts the neighborhood
and, if so, the price of that study.
Lo said the department wasn’t doing a study but he could
quickly come up with six-month figures. He explained that use
of the air horn is at the driver’s discretion.
“If (vehicles) don’t move for the siren,” Lo
said, “we use the air-horns. We want to get them there
quickly before a fire spreads to other buildings.”
From the audience, resident Michael Pedersen said he had made
his own study. From their 400 Hyde Street apartment, he and
his wife noted the number of fire trucks and ambulances passing
through the Hyde and Ellis intersection and the times, he said.
From April 15 to May 14 there were 210, he said, and from June
1 to June 30 there were 235.
“The real number is materially higher, as tracing of
occurrences has not been done 24 hours a day but rather 12-16
hours (due to earplug-induced sleep, and nobody home three-four
hours a day,” Pedersen explained later in an e-mail to
The Extra. “That makes it likely to be a real average
exceeding 10 times a day for the mentioned period of time and
that is a lot of noise created considering the volume of those
air horns.”
Pedersen told The Extra in a phone conversation
he knows two people who plan to move away and three who already
have because of the “uncivilized” condition.
“The people I knew who moved said they had no choice,” Pedersen
said. “But we have to do something about it. It’s
a difficult issue and easily dismissed. But at some point it
is bad planning, and after that meeting John Lo agreed with
me. He tells it like it is.”
With 70% of the calls being for medical
reasons, Nulty told Lo at the meeting, more inquisitive 911
operators could quickly determine that sending a fire truck
wasn’t the proper
response, an idea Lo agreed made good sense.
Nulty
said he had already asked for a six-month record from the department
and hadn’t gotten a response. And he had asked the Department
of the Environment to do a noise study, but such a request,
he said, isn’t acted on unless it comes from an official,
like Daly.
“He (Daly) is the supervisor for the whole district
and he wants to make sure the neighborhoods work well together,” Keyes
said. “We need more information in writing about the
problem. Send us something.”
Nulty was surprised that Daly didn’t have an internal
report from his representative at the June 14 forum, Paul Simon,
and he was irked that sirens were dominating the meeting’s
agenda. Nulty told Keyes he was being “disruptive” of
the Alliance meeting.
“And basically,” Nulty said, “you
say nothing has happened. We did the forum!”
“That’s fine, Mr. Nulty,” Keyes
said.
“We’re going to move this meeting along. I’m
not chastising you.”
“You already have.”
Keyes said he would report to Daly’s
office and a meeting would be set up with the committee.
The Siren Abatement Committee
that was formed includes: Regi Meadows, Norma Smith-Wilson,
Marvis Phillips, James Dixon, Matthew Zibilich, Min-Kuei Jan
Change, Pedersen, Steve Conley, Susan Bryan and Michael Nulty.
A chair has not been named and the first meeting has not yet
been set
