the real question burning in my mind (re: ambulance siren options) is, what do the different sounds mean and when / why would the person in control of The Knob choose a particular one over another?
This varies by location and agency, but where I worked (a private BLS service in Washington state), hereās what we did:
When we were on a lights-and-sirens call*, we would useĀ āwailā most of the time, which is a long WEEEEOOOO WEEEEOOOOO. Ā When we came to an intersection or a cluster of cars, weād switch toĀ āyelp,ā a faster and higher-pitched BREEEBREEEBREEEE, to get everyoneās attention.
(At night weād sometimes run lights without any sirens, and only turn on the sirens if we encountered traffic, to avoid waking everyone up.)
If someone wasnāt getting out of our way, our options to increase the urgency of the sound wereĀ āT3ā (a laser-blaster noise like WAAWAAAWAAAWAA), air horn (BWAAAAAAAMP), or PA system (āPULL TO THE RIGHT! NO, YOUR OTHER RIGHT! Ā GOD DAMN IT.ā)
*Note that many calls, including emergency calls, were not lights-and-sirens. Ā This depended on what fire district we were in and what the emergency was, but always bear in mind that just because an ambulanceās lights are off, doesnāt mean it isnāt going to an emergency or carrying a patient. Ā You should expect a lights-off ambulance to obey normal traffic rules, but please donāt unnecessarily delay it.
