You know, thinking about these sirens made me remember something from when I was a kid. (I say kid, but I was really a toddler, maybe 3 or 4 at the most.) My mom had to work, so she left me with a nice older lady who babysat a few kids during the day. Her house was right next to the town's water tower. The emergency siren was on said water tower. Said siren would go off to dispatch the volunteer fire department. Being right next to it, it was *very* loud and absolutely scared the bejesus out of me. Terrified would be a better word.
The fear is so engrained in me that when I visit my parents, who now live in another town that still uses a siren, and it goes off to alert the local fire department, it makes me a bit uncomfortable. I can hear this wailing out in the distance and I get this brief sense of dread and an incredible feeling of unease the whole time it's going. It creeps me the hell out, all because of the siren that terrorized me as a toddler.