When a fleet of emergency vehicles raced past Janet Sanborn Jonas’ downtown Bangor apartment as she prepared to move to her new house in the suburbs, she remembered thinking, “I’m not going to miss that.”
“We only had two complaints when living downtown, and one of them was the sirens,” said Sanborn Jonas, who lived downtown for a year. “I never got accustomed to the sirens because they were so piercing and went right by my building.”
Jonas is one of many who live or work in downtown Bangor familiar with the loud, sometimes painful, sirens fire trucks and ambulances emit when racing to someone who needs help.
“The sound seems to bounce off the walls and reverberate, making it worse, and the sound came right through our windows,” Sanborn Jonas said. “When I was working from home, I had to interrupt many meetings when they went by. They’re extremely startling and interruptive, but also necessary.”
Sirens in emergency vehicles are commonplace around the world, but to some who live and work in downtown Bangor, the sirens in the Queen City are seemingly louder and more frequent than other cities. As it turns out, they might not be entirely wrong.
The sirens are becoming more frequent, Assistant Chief Chandler Corriveau of the Bangor Fire Department said. Bangor’s three departments responded to a record 11,000 calls last year, an increase of 2,000 over the year before.
Central Station, perched on the edge of downtown Bangor, responded to 4,500 of the department’s 11,000 calls last year, making it the city’s busiest station, Corriveau said.
Corriveau said more 911 calls may be tied to the wave of tourists visiting Bangor as COVID-19 pandemic wanes, the state’s higher number of older adults and the increasing opioid overdoses Bangor has seen in recent years.
While some believe the sirens are too loud, Eric Ferguson, an assistant professor of audio engineering at Husson University’s New England School of Communications, said Bangor’s the sirens likely aren’t as deafening as they may seem.
There are likely two reasons Bangor’s emergency sirens may seem louder, according to Ferguson, especially when passing through downtown: the city’s relatively low background noise and the architecture.
“The background noise here is relatively quieter because we’re a smaller city, so when we have loud interruptions against that background noise, we notice it,” he said. “I would bet that on a concert night, or a busy day at the airport, you don’t notice the sirens as much.”
Ferguson agreed sirens can be startling, bothersome and even painful when a fire truck drives by, but said the pitch and frequency of the siren are designed to be that way.
“The human ear can hear a broad spectrum of frequencies, but it’s most sensitive in the midrange where human speech is, and sirens are designed to be at that frequency,” he said. “Sirens, like a baby crying, are designed to cut through anything and are especially ear-piercing and aggravating.”
Buildings also trap noise, Ferguson said, so when a firetruck or ambulance drives though downtown Bangor with tall buildings on either side of the street, the sound is going to bounce between them, making the siren seem louder. This would be most noticeable to a pedestrian who’s standing between a siren and a wall.
After working at Paddy Murphy’s for four years, Ziya Moon, a bartender and server, has gotten used to the frequent sirens cruising through downtown Bangor. The pub’s patrons, however, are generally more startled by the sound, especially if they’re from a more rural area.
Everyone in the restaurant’s outdoor seating area usually has to pause their conversation when an emergency vehicle drives by.
“Part of living in a city, even if it’s a small city like Bangor, is you have to get used to sound and traffic and people,” Moon said. “[Sirens] are a part of the atmosphere. I don’t like it, but it’s a part of living in a city.”
Amanda Sohns, who co-owns a business downtown, notices how sirens echo through downtown Bangor, which makes it difficult to tell from which direction the siren is coming.
“I absolutely support firefighters, and I know sirens are for safety, but I feel like it’s excessively loud,” Sohns said. “It’s a dangerous level of noise, and I’m worried it’s damaging people’s hearing. I see people covering their ears when one drives past.”
While a single loud sound happening close to a person’s ear can cause hearing loss, it’s more common after continued exposure to loud sounds, especially when a person isn’t wearing hearing protection, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some sounds the CDC lists as most likely to cause hearing loss through repeated exposure over time include concerts and loud music, power tools, gas-powered equipment like lawnmowers, and sirens.
A single ambulance cruising through downtown Bangor peaked at 103 decibels when measured from the corner of State and Center streets.
Sound measuring at 100 decibels can cause hearing loss after 15 minutes, according to the CDC. When that sound is elevated to 105 to 110 decibels, however, hearing loss is possible after five minutes.
Perhaps the biggest contributor to the sirens’ annoyance is simply Central Station’s proximity to downtown. Downtown is not only the most direct way for first responders to respond to a call, but also one of the most heavily trafficked areas and forces emergency vehicles to use their sirens.
Sohns, who has also lived downtown for 11 years, said many tourists who visit her business comment on the number of sirens and ask about them, which she worries changes visitors’ opinions of Bangor.
“It gives people this perception that Bangor isn’t a safe place,” she said. “I hear it regularly enough that I need to explain to them that downtown is the main route from the station. Downtown is the place we’re trying to draw people to, so having downtown be the best route for emergency vehicles seems counterintuitive.”
City emergency vehicles have a few different noises they can emit, from sirens to yelps, Corriveau said. Officers cannot, however, control the volume of the sounds. Officers will generally turn their lights on but refrain from using their siren late at night when there aren’t many cars on the road.
State and city law mandates drivers move to the right side of the road and stop when an emergency vehicle, whether it’s a police car, fire truck or ambulance, approaches so it can pass through traffic safely and quickly. If an emergency vehicle doesn’t have its lights or sirens on, it must move with the flow of traffic.
But even the use of lights and sirens can create additional hazards. First responders are seeing more distracted drivers who don’t move over for emergency vehicles or drive erratically when they see one.
“People forget to pull over and stop, we’ve had drivers look at us then race us to get out of the way,” Corriveau said. “We’ve had pedestrians walk right out in front of us when we’re responding to a call with lights and sirens.”
For those annoyed and frustrated by the sirens, Corriveau said the sirens are legally necessary. Using sirens also significantly reduces the department’s response times, which result in reduced fire damage and better outcomes in medical emergencies.
“The person who called 911 is going to appreciate the quick response when their loved one isn’t breathing or there’s a building fire with someone trapped inside,” he said.
