Stawell Fire Brigade captain Mal Nicholson said the alarm stopped working several weeks ago due to an unknown cause, and there is no timeline for when it will be operational again.

"At the moment it is not working, but it is on the list to be repaired," he said.

"But we are not sure when that will happen because we need to bring some equipment to get up there and have a look at it.

READ MORE:

"It did this last year and we are not sure if birds get into or something, but it was operating very slowly and then it just stopped working."

Mr Nicholson said the Stawell Fire Brigade is waiting for Melbourne's specialists to come and fix the problem.

"It just depends on the availability of the tower guys who need to come up and fix it, so there needs to be specialists to come in and fix it," he said.

"And because it is a very old siren, the last time it broke they had some trouble getting parts to fix it."

OTHER NEWS:

Mr Nicholson said the fire brigade often receive complaints about the siren, but they also get complaints when the siren isn't working.

"It is one of those things that were are doomed if we do and doomed if we don't," he said.

"We get that many complaints about the siren going off all the time, and then we get complaints that the siren is not going off.

"Like the other night (Sunday) we had two turnouts, so that would be annoying people locally if that was going off twice in an hour."

If you can see this message, you are a loyal digital subscriber to The Stawell Times-News, as we made this story available only to subscribers. Thank you very much for your support and for allowing us to continue telling Stawell's story. We appreciate your support of journalism in our great town.