Media blowing siren issue out of proportion Sometimes you can be amazed by the things people make a big deal about especially what the media considers important. When budget cuts put lives in danger it doesn't even get a story. When someone gets woken up a few times because there is a fire in someone else's house it's a big deal, makes the front page. Most likely this happens because one is easier to explain than the other - soundbites and headlines. We know that the fire siren ("Keyport resident wants emergency siren silenced," May 9) in one form or another has been around as long as the fire department has been in Keyport (130 years) either as a bell, an airhorn or a siren. We also know that Alexander Petrovich has never been a volunteer firefighter or first-aider so he has been able to sleep soundly most nights or at least go back to sleep after he has been woken up. It is also not likely people who complain about the siren or the editorial writers from other newspapers have been volunteers either. Yet they seem to know an awful lot about running a volunteer fire department. I have been a member of the Keyport Fire Department for 27 years now and I know the siren makes a difference, based on the times it has not worked for short periods of time. Everyone assumes that the pagers will work every time and they won't be broken, the battery dead, turned off accidentally, or left by mistake in the car. And any firefighter (paid or volunteer) can tell you one more firefighter at the scene can make the difference between a small amount of damage and a complete loss. As the fire chief, I want every available member at a call not just to put out the fire out quickly but for the safety of the firefighters and the public. I am proud of the Keyport Fire Department - despite being an all-volunteer department our response time is around three minutes from the time of dispatch. There are paid departments that can't match our response time. I don't want to mess with that kind of success. The next time you hear the siren you might want to look next door or across the street - that might be where the fire is. There are several options available to silence the siren. Hire a paid fire department, but I doubt the people complaining would want to pay the extra taxes on the $3 million per year it would cost to support a small paid department. We could impose fines on people who have fires that they cause (leaving a pot on the stove, not maintaining their furnace) - many foreign countries have reduced fire rates to almost nothing through that method. And therefore fewer sirens at night. Get the complainers to join the fire department. If more people would, the pagers would be more effective and we would need less noise to get more volunteers out. But that would involve losing sleep, too. Just turn off the siren and when the fire trucks don't get out, say you're sorry to the person whose house just burned down but you really needed that night's sleep Or we can just keep the siren and the few complaining residents can be woken up another 16 times or so between now and the end of the year and then can go back to sleep knowing that when they need the fire department or first aid, help will be on the way, and they will hear it coming. Bill Larkin Chief, Keyport Fire Department