Horn’s Silence May Signal a Blow to Town Traditions

The tarnished brass horn resounded through the hills of Sierra Madre almost every day for 59 years, a tradition of the all-volunteer Fire Department that seemed to root this foothill town in its beloved past.

When the horn was installed, one local said it sounded like a “600-horsepower bullfrog with a battery in its throat.” Still, many residents found it comforting, an old friend shared by the community like the long-gone cannery whistles in Monterey.

But recently Sierra Madre leaders began hearing complaints that the loud, three-second blast scared people sitting in the town’s new alfresco eateries and cafes. Apparently, choking on their Thai barbecue pizza detracted from the ambience customers were seeking.

So this month, the City Council voted to immediately stop testing the horn every day at 7 p.m. With cellular paging systems, there are better and less disruptive ways to alert firefighters to trouble.

But in a city that sits 15 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles yet looks a bit like rural Idaho, old ways die hard. Sierra Madre boasts the only all-volunteer fire department in Los Angeles County, and still shows movies in the park under the summer starlight.

Now, some residents are pining for the horn’s head-splitting sonic blurt.

Wearing T-shirts pleading their cause, a group of residents Monday night presented a petition with 660 signatures to the council asking that the testing resume.

“It is a daily reminder of the volunteer Fire Department and how proud we are of it,” one resident said.

Some say the complaints against the horn are a sad side effect of a town in flux, where joints that used to make a greasy Philadelphia cheese steak now serve dishes aux epinards et fromage. They say new residents and visitors don’t understand the old customs of a place whose heart is not so chic.

“They come to this city for this kind of atmosphere and then they turn around and want to change it,” said George Maurer, 76, who started the signature drive. “There’s a lot of stories behind this horn.”

With kick-boxing and Tae-Bo gyms moving into Baldwin Avenue storefronts and home prices shooting above the timberline, some worry that rustic Sierra Madre--population 10,762--is becoming an elite bedroom community.

“More people are coming from the city to get away from the hustle and bustle,” said Fire Chief Ed Tracy. “But they don’t want to be inconvenienced with the traditions that are here.”

The horn, perched on a high concrete pole on Baldwin Avenue and powered by compressed air, is aimed toward the looming San Gabriel Mountains. The sound ricochets off the steep granite and carries for miles.

Of course, opinions on the horn hinge mainly on one’s proximity to it. Jeff Greenman, who signed the petition, recently moved here from Venice Beach and lives high up in the canyon, where the alert, like the urban sprawl below, is only as invasive as a distant fog horn.

“We laughed when we first heard it,” he said. “It’s very Sierra Madre.”

But Raul Santo, who had lived within a block of the horn for years and owns a Baldwin Avenue tea room right next to it, gets a jolt of wrath every time he hears it.

“The firefighters love that thing and I hate it,” he said. “Sometimes when I’m on the sidewalk and it sounds, people walking, they jump. I’m not kidding.”

Other residents who live under the horn said they would be satisfied if it just blew at a time other than the dinner hour.

A recent incident that influenced the council’s decision occurred when an elderly woman coming out of K’s Deli was so shocked by the sound that she lost her balance and fell. She was not injured, but firefighters had to respond to help her.

“We don’t go to the barber shop at 7 p.m.,” joked Bobby Hatfield, a firefighter who runs a hardware store across the street from the station.

When it was shown and heard in the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” film, local lore has it that a firefighter in the audience at a theater went running out to look for a fire.

Sierra Madre installed the horn in August 1940 as a system to notify volunteers of fires and medical emergencies. It replaced a faulty air raid siren whose blaring sometimes couldn’t be turned off because its lubricating grease would harden in the cold.

For decades it blew at noon and was called the “noon whistle.” Then, several years ago, in response to shop owners’ complaints, it was switched to the evening.

The Fire Department’s insurance requires two methods of alerting emergency workers, and both must be tested daily. Volunteer firefighters now rely primarily on pagers, and since the daily horn has stopped, they must wear two. The horn will still be tested on the last Friday of every month.

Even though firefighters say the pagers are equally, if not more, effective, many residents want the horn to keep sounding as a beloved quirk of the town’s personality.

“It’s kind of a comforting thing,” said Erika Levoe, 14. “You know if something’s going on in town and when it’s 7 o’clock. We always used it as a curfew.”

On a recent evening in Sierra Madre, outside the Only Place in Town, a non-new, non-chic diner where he is a host, pro-horn leader Maurer talked about the horn and the old days with a grin and gleam in his eye. He hit up an occasional passerby for a signature as diners gazed at the shadows creeping up the plum-colored peaks.

Maurer, a former mayor who was a volunteer firefighter for 18 years, thinks the horn controversy is a sign that the tight fabric of the community is slowly unraveling. He noted that the Fire Department is beginning to have trouble recruiting volunteers. “People have such busy lives nowadays,” he said. “They just don’t attach themselves to the city as much as they used to.”