More noise in LIC!

From the Daily News:

A blaring alarm from a building in Long Island City was the source of a weeks-long mystery for some locals.

The shrieking sound from the two-story, windowless structure on Second St. near Borden Ave. - which sources said houses a vent for railroad tracks that lead to Penn Station - sometimes sounds for days at a time, locals said.

And it baffled residents who tried to figure out who was to blame for the noise.

"No one was taking responsibility," said Khalil Hymore, 33, who first tried logging a complaint weeks ago. "It was a lot of run-around."

A sign posted on the front of the building states that the building is the property of the Long Island Rail Road. But when Hymore, who lives in the nearby Citylights high-rise, called the agency, he hit a dead end.

"They'd say it wasn't their building," he said. The agency eventually told him the space was leased to Amtrak.

"When we called Amtrak, the people I spoke to had no knowledge that this building existed," he said. "They said I had to call the MTA."

The structure is, in fact, shared by both the LIRR and Amtrak. Officials at the federal rail company are now investigating the source of the alarm, a spokesman said.

Fire alarm boxes on their way out?

From the Daily News:

Mayor Bloomberg wants to extinguish fire alarm boxes from city streets.

Bloomberg pitched the fiery move this week as part of his budget for fiscal year 2011, saying it would save FDNY $2.5 million.

Since 85% of calls made through the street boxes are false alarms, Bloomberg said, "In the days where everybody has cell phones ... the city would be just as safe without them."

Only 140 structural fires last year out of 26,666 were first called in through an alarm box - and phone calls on those fires came in after the boxes were pulled, according to the FDNY.

But a change in the law is needed to scrap the 15,000 boxes because in 1997 a federal judge said such a move violates the civil rights of the deaf.