Close to 4,400 current and former firefighters are suing an Illinois-based company that makes sirens, saying the sirens were too loud and that not enough was done to protect their hearing.
Joseph Nardone, a former fire battalion chief in New York City, told The Associated Press that a decade after retiring, he has hearing loss that prevents him from following along with fast conversations. "The siren was so loud inside the cab that it actually physically hurt," he said. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that Federal Signal Corp. should have designed sirens that shield firefighters from sounds that reach 120 decibels, about the equivalent of the noise level at a rock concert. The sound does not need to go "to the rear of the fire engine," attorney Marc Bern said. "If you're driving behind a fire engine and you don't see a 50-foot-long, red engine with lights going on and off, there's really something wrong."
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