Current and former firefighters sue sirenmaker over their hearing loss

There were times by the end of his shift that firefighter Joseph Nardone's head would be pounding, his eyes crossing from the noise of the siren on his truck.

"The siren was so loud inside the cab that it actually physically hurt," said the former New York City fire battalion chief. Even though he's been retired for over a decade, he said, the effects of the sirens linger in hearing loss that has left him unable to understand rapid conversation or follow along in church.

Nardone is among about 4,400 current and former firefighters nationwide who are suing Federal Signal Corp, an Oak Brook, Illinois-based company that makes sirens, claiming it didn't do enough to make them safer for those on fire trucks who have to listen to them nearly every day.

They said the company could have designed them in a way that directs the volume away from areas where firefighters sit in the engines, shielding them from sound blasts that lawyers say reach 120 decibels, roughly equivalent to a rock concert.

"The manufacturer had the means and ability to do something about it and they didn't," the 73-year-old Nardone said.

Federal Signal argues that directing the sound defeats one of the main purposes of a siren - to warn motorists and pedestrians that a truck is coming. And it said it has long supported what many departments have advised its firefighters to do: Wear ear protection.

The lawsuits, which began surfacing more than a decade ago, have been in places such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston, New Jersey and the Chicago area, said attorney Marc Bern, who's leading all the lawsuits. In documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said juries have decided in favor of Federal Signal in most of the half-dozen or so suits that have gone to trial.

The company also has settled in some cases without admitting any wrongdoing. The largest settlement, reached in 2011, required the company to pay $3.6 million to 1,069 firefighters for cases filed in Philadelphia.