h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Our little hamlet is a hub of activity this evening. We had an emergency--I don't know what type. Three firetrucks, the ambulance and police all went east of town with red lights and sirens. They were back within fifteen minutes so it must have been a non-event. Thank goodness.
Those of you who hail from large cities do not realize how sirens affect those of us in small towns. We know everyone here so everytime the firetruck or ambulance goes out, it is personal. We're always glad when they return within fifteen minutes.

Well, another non event? The ambulance went north with red lights and sirens about thirty minutes ago. Are they having practice tonight or what? This time the ambulance is still out............ Not a real good sign.

this kind of curiosity is what lead Jim to buy a scanner so that he could listen to what was going on. Sometimes this leads to great amusement. One time he listened to a two hour event where a bull had gotten loose from a local veterinarian office and was out wandering in the woods behind the airport. The police and sherriff spent a long time trying to find this animal. They even went so far as to speak to a helicopter pilot who ferried one the CEO's of one of our companies here around. He was coming in for a landing and obligingly circled around the woods inquestion trying to locate the bull. He finally did, but even with him hovering over the animal, the police were still having a hard time finding him. Eventually they did, and then they had the grand fun of herding him back to the office he had escaped from. Life in a small town police department is rarely dull. Different, but not dull.

Hope everything is okay with the people being visited by the ambulance, though.

We have friends who have a scanner. I can call them and ask, but sometimes not enough info comes over the scanner to figure out what is going on.
Sometimes I think our firemen (volunteers, all) like to play with the siren..........

We don't live 'in the city', but we're far enough on the outskirts that we can pretend we're country. Our subdivision sits at the junction of two two-lane country highways that intersect at a bad angle. We hear sirens almost daily, usually in the evenings. We call it our nightly serenade.

In 1982 I moved from a home that was 13 miles outside of Fairbanks on a little frequented dirt road to the corner of 11th and Lincoln in San Francisco. At the place in Alaska we never heard sirens. The fire department didn't come out there at all. If the police or ambulance were coming they didn't bother with sirens because there was no traffic. What we heard were squirrels, chickadees and wolves howling on occasion. The place in SF was one block away from a fire station, and right on the main drag leading to the UC Medical Center, and about 8 blocks down from the UC police substation. There were sirens constantly, from all directions, at all times of night. Nearly drove me mad.

Talk about culture shock, hmh. You got a big dose of it, didn't you?

We don't have sirens more than once a week or ten days so it becomes quite a curiosity when four or five go screaming out of town at one time. Most of the time the ambulance doesn't use the siren since traffic is light most of the time.

cutlture shock is the word, for sure. I remember one Sunday morning I got up at about 5:30 a.m. and climbed over the fence into the arboretum so I could sit in a place where there weren't any other people for a while.