BREAKING NEWS: Early morning siren alarms neighbors

In the early morning hours, shortly after midnight on Tuesday, Nov. 5, the siren at the former Niwot Volunteer Fire Department building next to the Left Hand Grange building in Niwot, went off, waking residents of Old Town and beyond.

Worried neighbors who called law enforcement were informed that it was not an emergency, and that the siren had simply malfunctioned. Before members of Left Hand Grange No. 9 could respond to the scene, the Boulder County Sheriff's Department responded and pried open the door, allowing them to shut off the siren.

Nearby resident Laura Bloom posted on Facebook, "For Niwotians wondering what that siren was just after midnight last night...It was a malfunction of the old siren on top of the old firehouse behind the grange."

The fire station was built in the late 1960's and housed Niwot's Volunteer Fire Department trucks until 1983, when the Mountain View Fire Rescue facility was built on Niwot Road and Longview Drive. The building has been used for storage by the Niwot Community Association and the Left Hand Grange No. 9, as well as other community groups.

A retired volunteer firefighter recalled that when a call came in, the first firefighters to respond would push the button on the wall, activating the siren, and that if the call was west of the Diagonal Highway, another button could be pushed to trip the traffic lights for a few minutes at the Niwot Road and Diagonal Highway intersection.