Oakesdale siren tops new incubator space

The long-awaited Oakesdale business incubator has met with one hitch; the office is directly under the city fire siren.

The siren lets out an ear-splitting alarm once a day, blasted out over this rural town of 350 people. Oakesdale city council at their last meeting discussed what to do about the situation.

The old-school siren scream can be heard daily all over town at noon.

City clerk Mary DeGon said the city called Avista to see what could be done about the siren.

Avista representatives pointed out moving the structure to another location would mean finding an adequate power source. The current power source for the siren is very high, said DeGon.

The cost to build a second power source of similar power would be too expensive for Oakesdale, DeGon told the Gazette.

DeGon said they would next contact M &M Harrison Electric to see about reducing the voltage for the siren.

DeGon said they may not take any action until a business tenant moves into the incubator space.

“Maybe they are going to be someone that could be annoyed, especially when you’re on the phone,” DeGon said.

If there is a fire emergency anywhere in Fire District 10 and not enough volunteers respond to the initial page, the fire siren goes off.

Volunteers who didn’t hear their pagers go off hear the siren go off and respond.

Mike Harrison, co-owner of Harrison Electric in Colfax, said he has worked on several old-school fire sirens for towns throughout the county. Yes, there is a way to manually regulate the volume, he said.

Installing a variable frequency drive (VFD) would slow down the motor within, Harrison said.

“If you were wanting to make one quiet, I think the best way to do it would be to put in a variable frequency drive. Instead of allowing the motor to wind-up to 100 percent, you could cut that down to 85 percent,” Harrison said.

For a full-size siren the cost of the drive would be less than $1,000 and the installation would cost approximately another $1,000, Harrison said.

“I can tell you that the new electronic sirens have more directional speakers in them as opposed to the old air-raid sirens that typically throw out in a single direction,” Harrison said.

Fire District 10 commissioner Tom Hodges said the fire department was open to the city moving the fire siren. However, when told the city was considering lowering the volume, Hodges said a reasonable volume was still needed.

“That is something we have to negotiate with the city. We don’t want to quiet it down too much,” Hodges said.