Fire department urges Mahanoy City borough council to find suitable location for fire box alarm
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL FILE - A Mahanoy City fire box at Main and Centre Streets in December.
MAHANOY CITY – A host of firefighters came out to Mahanoy City’s borough council meeting this month, asking council to find a suitable location to replace the alarm for its Gamewell fire box system.
The alarm — a set of air horns facing east and west — was previously set up atop the borough-owned Mahanoy City Teen Canteen building on East Centre Street. That building, disused for about five or six years, was demolished last year and the alarm system was taken out of service.
The system is a Gamewell Telegraph Fire Alarm System, in which call boxes are placed throughout town and, when a box is activated, the air horns sound in a numerical series corresponding to the box. If box number 52 is pulled, the air horns will blast five times, pause, blast two times, pause, and repeat.
Mahanoy City has had such a system since at least the early 1900s, and is one of a diminishing number of communities across the country that still maintains one, including Shenandoah locally.
At last Tuesday’s council meeting, Fire Chief Dan Markiewicz said the department, borough, and Schuylkill Historical Fire Society, of Shenandoah, have been working since the Teen Canteen’s demolition to restore the system to working order.
“As far as the placement of the system, that’s an argument for another day, we’re not here for that,” Markiewicz said, joined by chiefs from each borough company. “We just want to make it known to borough council, the purpose of the fire alarm system is not only to alert firefighters — we have pagers, we have IAmResponding — but to alert the community.”
Markiewicz said the system is a failsafe if the 911 system goes down, citing an outage in September that impacted a large portion of eastern Pennsylvania.
“That system is vital to the public safety of this community and I know things take time, but we just hope borough council will do the right thing and find a home for the fire alarm system,” Markiewicz said.
All of the borough’s fire companies, he said, wrote letters to council.
“There’s solidarity here. I can’t stress to you enough how vital this fire alarm system is,” Markiewicz said. “Some people say it’s an antique, it’s a relic, do away with it. It’s vital. It’s a public safety issue.”
He said Mahanoy City’s system is in the best condition in Schuylkill County.
Mike Kitsock, of the Schuylkill Historical Fire Society, said parts and equipment have been obtained and donated in the past year.
“The key here is to notify the public that there is an emergency in the community, and that is something that cannot be done right now,” Kitsock said. “We are imploring you, to please get this project moving ahead.”
Council said the key issues are funding and a location.
“We still have a lot of work going forward to finalize this,” Michael Connolly, council president, said.
Kathy McKerns said that, when she had a fire and was stuck on her roof with her family, the fire alarm system let her know help was on the way.
“We are going to figure this out,” Connolly said.
The fire alarm system was a topic of controversy at December’s meeting, when Jillian Mullen, executive director of the Schuylkill County Education Council, aired concerns about the idea of placing the siren atop the Senator Rhoades Downtown Center.
At that meeting, she described the alarm system as a want, not a need, for the town and worried about the impact its placement atop the borough-owned downtown center would have on its tenants.
Markiewicz said he doesn’t care where it goes, as long as it returns.
In the West End Fire Company’s letter to council, they said that, if the alarm system is operable, a Verizon outage would mean the department would not have to man the stations in that instance.
They also cited the speed of the system. Within seconds of activation, the alarm sounds.
“If the use of the box alarm saves one person in 10 years, then it did its job,” Ann Gavala, company secretary, said in the letter. “It is important to note that the National Fire Protection Association recommends that there are at least two reliable means to alert firefighters. The siren will get the firefighters’ attention at any time as cell phones, pagers, and radio batteries can die.”
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