Firefighters sue maker of sirens over hearing loss

Associated Press

NEW YORK

There were times by the end of his shift that firefighter Joseph Nardone’s head would be pounding, his eyes crossing from the noise of the siren on his truck.

“The siren was so loud inside the cab that it actually physically hurt,” said the former New York City fire battalion chief. Even though he’s been retired for more than a decade, he said, the effects of the sirens linger in hearing loss that has left him unable to understand rapid conversation or follow along in church.

Nardone is among about 4,400 current and former firefighters nationwide who are suing Federal Signal Corp., an Oak Brook, Ill.-based company that makes sirens, claiming it didn’t do enough to make them safer for those on firetrucks who have to listen to them nearly every day.

They say the company could have designed them in a way that directs the volume away from areas where firefighters sit in the trucks, shielding them from sound blasts that lawyers say reach 120 decibels, roughly equivalent to a rock concert. Said the 73-year-old Nardone: “The manufacturer had the means and ability to do something about it, and they didn’t.”

Federal Signal argues that directing the sound defeats one of the main purposes of a siren – to warn motorists and pedestrians that a truck is coming. And it says it long has supported what many departments have advised its firefighters to do: Wear ear protection.

The lawsuits, which began surfacing more than a decade ago, have been in places such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston, New Jersey and the Chicago area, said attorney Marc Bern, who’s leading all the lawsuits.