By Donna Porstner
Staff Writer
March 10, 2008
STAMFORD - Now that it once again is staffed by volunteers, Belltown Fire Department is making a lot of noise.
Every day at 4 p.m., the Dorlen Road firehouse tests the air horn on the roof, used to summon volunteers to emergencies.
"It's a blast from the past, is what it is," Chief John Didelot said.
The horn was the primary device for calling volunteers when he joined the department in 1972, but its use diminished as pagers and radios took over. It wasn't used regularly for about 20 years.
Pagers still are the primary method of alerting volunteers, but the Belltown firehouse started sounding the horn again after the city removed paid firefighters in January as part of a plan to merge the paid and volunteer departments.
"We're not using it as a first means of communications with members by any means. It's a secondary device. We want another way of notifying the members," Didelot said. "We're not trying to step back in time. It's just a little nostalgic is all -Êand it does serve a purpose. There are a fair number of members who still live locally and it gives you a heads up."
About half of the 40 members live in the district, which covers a little more than 1 square mile.
Joseph Coppola, a Belltown volunteer of 47 years who was chief from 1981 to 2001, said the horn comes in handy when volunteers are home working in the yard.
"If we're outside mowing the grass or washing our car, we may not be within earshot of our pagers," Coppola said.
The department sought a backup because there are times the dispatch center forgets to call the volunteers, or their pagers malfunction, Didelot said.
"The bottom line is that if we don't know about a call, we can't respond to a call," he said.
Years ago, the horn sounded in a Morse Code pattern that identified the site of the emergency when a fire alarm was pulled. Volunteers would count how many times the horn blared and refer to a chart that told them where to go.
Every street and public building in the neighborhood was assigned a number. For example, Trinity Catholic High School was 14, so the horn would blow once, pause and then sound four more times for incidents there.
The 4 p.m. horn began in the 1940s, when the department hired its first paid driver, Tom Morris, to work the day shift.
"On his way out, he would blow the horn to say, 'I'm going home; the place is unmanned,' " said Tom Alessi, a longtime volunteer and former assistant chief who heard the story from Morris.
They stopped using the horn in 1988, when the city opened the 911 center.
Now the horn sounds only for major emergencies - when members remember to use it. To activate it, they have to press a red button. It blows 16 times - four blasts of four. During the 4 p.m. test, it sounds twice.
Other fire departments used air horns to summon volunteers but abandoned the practice long ago.
"Even up here in the woods, we have jumped into the 21st century," said Ralph Nau, assistant chief of Long Ridge Fire Company in North Stamford.
Springdale Fire Company used to sound the horn every night at 8 p.m. but stopped using it in the late 1990s, when there were problems with the timer. Shortly after that, it was disconnected for a renovation project and went by the wayside for a few years, Springdale Chief Shawn Fahan said. The horn is hooked up today, but members activate it only for working fires, homeland security drills and tests at least once a month, Fahan said.
Long Ridge took down its air horn, which was tested daily at 7 p.m., about a decade ago, when they expanded the firehouse and replaced the roof, Nau said.
Before the 911 center,homeowners called the firehouse directly to report emergencies and members would sound the horn and run to a chalkboard next to the front door to write down the site of the call.
Now that members have radios and cell phones, using the horn would be a nuisance, Nau said.
"For the sake of the neighbors, we didn't re-install it after we put on the extension," he said.
Didelot said he has no complaints from Belltown residents.
For 21 years, Kola Papaj, owner of the A&K Gulf station on Newfield Avenue, has worked down the street from the firehouse.
"I don't hear it any more," Papaj said.
But a teenager working for him wanted to know what it was the first few times he heard it.
"I told him if it goes off eight, 10, 12 times, something's going on," Papaj said.
Joan Cogliano, who has lived on Francis Avenue since 1962, remembers when the fire horn was as familiar as the bell at Belltown School.
"There are a few of us old dogs around who remember it," Cogliano said.
Her street was "35" so the horn would blare three times, pause, and then five times if there was trouble.
"We all had a copy of that chart on our pantry doors, and many of us had children who were volunteers with the department," Cogliano said. "It was good for the residents because we were all nosey, and it was good for the volunteers."
Years ago, the 4 p.m. test signaled to the Irish setter next door, named Red, that it was time to go to the front yard and wait for his master, she said.
"When that horn went off, he knew it was time for the boss to come home," Cogliano said. "Those are the sweet little things that make a neighborhood."
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