I wonder if the siren thing varies from location to location, a good friend of mine lived right next to one and it seemed you couldn't go 15 minutes without being drown out by them heading out.
I wonder if the siren thing varies from location to location,
In my experience (former firefighter here), it absolutely does. It also varies by call type, time of day, etc. So if we got a call at 2:00 AM and there was no traffic on the road near the station, we might leave the station with no siren out of respect for the people trying to sleep in the homes very close to the station. This would be more true if the call was a lower priority call in the first place. OTOH though, if the call as "residential structure fire with occupants reported trapped" our focus would not be on sleeping neighbors and there's a better chance that we'd be getting on the Q pretty much right out the door.
Another factor for us was that our station was right next to an intersection that was very busy at times, and known for many traffic accidents. So any call where we had to turn left (towards the intersection) out of the parking lot, there was a better chance we'd be hitting the siren and air-horn pretty much right from the jump.
Anyway, yeah, net-net, this is going to vary based on lots of factors: department policy / culture, geography, time, traffic, etc, yadda yadda.
My office is adjacent to a fire station. The policy has changed over the years. They used to use the sirens all the time. Now they almost never use the sirens when they leave. In a way that makes it more disturbing when they do, you know there's a reason.
Other things which are bothersome about a firehouse…
• They put the communications radio on some sort of loud speaker sometimes, so you get to listen to all the calls in the city.
• They have some sort of turbine that runs a lot. Maybe a hose dryer? I haven't gone to ask, but when I used to do audio recordings there were days we couldn't record because of it.
• Their backup generator optimizes efficiency by minimizing the muffler. The tests are pretty loud.
• The building department made me block up the windows on their side because I was too close to the property line and a fire might spread to the fire station. I say if the fire department can't keep fire from coming out my window and setting fire to their building 60 feet away, that's at least partly their fault. :-)
• They are a multi-tier bureaucracy. When their tree slowly fell over on to my building it took many months to get them to admit it was their tree and maybe they should cut it down. Lots of finger pointing between the fire department and various city levels and a few "dead parrot" conversations with different functionaries.
If the fire station is located on a busy road or near a blind curve, turning on the siren when exiting might be a good policy. Out on a county road with good sight lines and low traffic? They can wait until they're going at a hazardous speed or intersection.
My main concern would be all of the communications equipment they typically have. Being that close to high powered transmitters can cause annoying interference.
Not just a good policy -- my wife is a former EMT & firefighter in MN, and at least there, apparently it's the law that fire trucks blast their horns at every intersection. Whether this is required when they leave the fire hall and turn onto the first road, I don't know.
He's since moved, I'm not sure if he had spoken to them, but I think you're right that it would have made him a hero of the area. This was a pretty densely residential area of Waukesha, WI - the fire department near the airport.
In NJ they go off all the time to alert the volunteers not at the station, and it's used for all emergencies, not just fires that need trucks to roll out.
