Dawn Evetts lives in a cottage at foot of Corbière causeway and claims inconsiderate people are making her life hell.
The 69-year-old suffers from a condition called hyperacusis, which she says means loud noises cause her excruciating pain and she described the condition as ‘hell on earth’.
She claims swarms of motorcyclists speeding up and down the causeway, firework displays and military re-enactments near her States-rented cottage are causing her considerable distress. At times it has been so bad she claims she has had to escape her home at night to seek refuge at a friend’s house.
Mrs Evetts says she has had meetings with Constable Steve Pallett about her problems and tried calling the honorary police but nothing has been done to help, so she is now refusing to pay her rates.
Earlier this week, the pensioner, who lives alone with her two rabbits, was taken to the Petty Debts Court by the parish of St Brelade over the non-payment. Mrs Evetts said the case against her was ‘thrown out’ by the court and she was advised to seek help from the Citizen’s Advice Bureau however this has not been confirmed.
St Brelade Constable Steve Pallett said the pensioner’s issues were not something that could be dealt with by the parish and he ‘categorically denied’ that the honorary police had not been acting on her complaints.
Mrs Evetts said: ‘I suffer from a condition called hyperacusis. It means I am intolerant to loud noises and it affects the nerves to the brain. There is no cure and the wearing of ear plugs is not recommended. My father had the condition and it is hell on earth.
‘I have lived here for four years and I have no refuge and nowhere to go. For two-and-a-half years I have been on the emergency transfer list with housing.’
Mrs Evetts said during one New Year firework display she had to flee her home and brave strong winds because the noise was so bad.
However, Mr Pallett said: ‘Most of the issues are not parish matters they are issues Mrs Evetts needs to take up with the relevant authorities. The only parish matter is the fact that she has not paid her rates.
Imagine being at a movie where the sound track is turned to the highest volume. Actors’ voices are screaming at you. After five minutes, you leave holding your ears and cursing the theater for its poor judgment. Turning newspaper pages, running water in the kitchen sink, your child placing dishes and silverware on the table – all are intolerable to your ears. A baby cries or a truck screeches its brakes to a halt and the sound is excruciating. What has happened to my ears?
The person who has hyperacusis can’t simply get up and walk away from noise. Instead, the volume on the whole world seems stuck on high. Hyperacusis is defined as a collapsed tolerance to normal environmental sounds. Ears also lose most of their dynamic range. What is dynamic range?
Dynamic range is the ability of the ear to deal with quick shifts in sound loudness. Suddenly everyday noises sound unbearably or painfully loud. The disorder is often chronic and usually accompanied by tinnitus (ringing in the ears), but can occur in patients who have little or no measurable hearing loss.
Hyperacusis differs from recruitment, which is an abnormal growth in the perception of loudness accompanied with hearing loss. With recruitment, loud noises are uncomfortable. With hyperacusis, all sounds are too loud.
Jerseys annoying noises:
SEVERAL residents in Springfield suffered a sleepless night in February 2013 after a mysterious noise similar to a gunshot repeatedly reverberated around the area.
The blasts began shortly after 9 pm and continued at regular intervals until the early hours. Several residents reported hearing the noise, and one neighbour – father-of-two Richard Pearce – even phoned the States police and took to the streets in the early hours in an attempt to solve the mystery.
He said: ‘We went to bed at about 10 pm on Saturday and we soon noticed a banging. It was generally a double bang in close succession that occurred in intervals of between five and ten minutes.
‘I gave up on getting any sleep by about midnight and decided go out hunting.
‘I called the police at about 1.15 am and helped them try to find the source of the noise but although they heard it, they couldn’t find where it was coming from.’
Although the noise disappeared on Sunday – it returned just in time for the start of the working week at about 6.30 am yesterday. But the mystery was solved just a few hours later when, after being contacted by Mr Pearce, staff at Springfield Stadium realised they had left the public announcement system on over the weekend.
It is believed that the banging was caused by a static build-up in the speaker system.
THE unlucky residents of the so-called ‘Millais Triangle’ appealed for help in October 2009 after finding themselves at the centre of a bizarre mystery for the second time in a year.
Just months after their car keys stopped working they were left scratching their heads – and covering their ears – by a low frequency noise which hummed constantly day and night.
The residents first noticed the noise in 2005 and by 2009 it had become so severe that they were forced to call in the Public Health department.
The team placed recording devices at every likely source of low frequency noise in the area – including mobile phone masts, electricity sub stations and the Airport – but were unable to find the cause of the buzzing. They did, however, confirm that there
definitely was a low-frequency noise in the area.
Speaking to the JEP at the time, resident David Capps said: ‘It sounds like a distant diesel engine that is going all the time.
During the following days JEP readers turned detectives and tried to solve the mystery once and for all. They suggested that the noise could be coming from a wind farm on the Normandy coast, a fault line, the Airport, mobile phone masts or boreholes. The mystery was never solved and some residents of the Millais Triangle are still plagued by the buzzing.
A MYSTERIOUS alarm kept Islanders awake for nights-on-end in 2013.
The bizarre high-pitched wavering sound could be heard at night and early in the morning but no-one could pinpoint the sound, which affected residents at castle Quay on the Waterfront. But after careful analysis the cause of the noise was discovered. A belt in a nearby air-conditioning unit was too tight. The problem was fixed and the noise – which had been going on for nearly a week – went away.
However, just as residents were starting to rest easy at night the noise returned. Over a year on the alarm-like sound had returned and this time it was louder than ever.
Nathan Jegou, head coach at Walkers Tigers swimming club, contacted the police and Environmental Health and the problem was soon solved.
EVER been to a music concert or a nightclub and woken up the next morning with ringing in your ears?
That ringing is called tinnitus – and for nearly five million people in the UK, it’s a noise that never goes away.
A sure sign of hearing damage, tinnitus is a noise in the head or the ears that has no external source, and although it’s often defined as a ringing, it can also be buzzing, whistling or even hearing a song in one or both ears, or in the middle of the head.
‘Tinnitus actually affects quite a lot of people – it has become quite a significant problem,’ says senior clinical audiologist at the General Hospital, Janet Rothwell.
‘Tinnitus can affect anyone, and even children can get it. There are a number of reasons for this – quite a lot of people experience brief periods of tinnitus, and the causes can be linked to over-exposure of loud music, hearing loss, ear or head injuries, and even stress,’ she says.
The condition can vary greatly in its severity – while some sufferers can live with tinnitus without much of a problem, others are significantly affected.
Marian Pitt, who is the former chairperson of the British Tinnitus Association’s Jersey branch, has lived with tinnitus since she was very young.
She says: ‘I developed a loud noise in my head when I was about nine years old after a bad dose of flu during the last war. Because I had never known total silence I thought that everyone else had similar background noises.
‘Years later I asked my husband “what does your noise sound like?” and I was astonished to discover that he had no background sounds inside his head.
‘My tinnitus became progressively worse as I grew up and over the years I have learned to get used to it. For many people it can be almost intolerable, especially when their surroundings are quiet, or they are in bed and unable to sleep. Stress or a high temperature seem to exacerbate things and I discovered that allowing myself to concentrate on this permanent intrusion, could, if I allowed it, drive me round the bend.’
Marian says she learned that coffee, or quinine in tonic water, could exacerbate the condition, which she says sounds like the noise of a pressure cooker about to explode.
‘For me it usually sounds as though it is coming from the middle of my head, but just occasionally it sounds louder in one ear than the other,’ she says.
Before Marian retired as chairperson of the Jersey Tinnitus Association, she took many phone calls from people who had suddenly developed a buzzing, hissing or pulsing sound in their ears after being exposed to loud music, like after a music concert.
‘They would ring me up every now and then just to have someone listen who completely understood what they were going through. Bit by bit they realised that there was not very much anyone else could do for them and that they had to learn how to deal with it themselves. You have to try and tune out, rather than tune in, as you would if you tuned in a radio,’ she says.
Luckily, for many, tinnitus may only be temporary – but that’s not to say that, one day, if you don’t take precautions, you might be stuck with it for good.
Janet says: ‘Fortunately it isn’t always permanent – for example, if you go to a music concert you can get something called a temporary threshold shift, where you might damage just a small amount of your hearing but it doesn’t cause any further long-term problems.
But we do see quite a few musicians and DJs who have developed tinnitus or hearing problems after being exposed in the past to loud music, because with listening to music too loudly you don’t realise that you’re causing hearing loss.’
While the condition can affect people of any age, it has a strong association with age-related hearing loss, and many sufferers are elderly.
To avoid ear damage from noise, the British Tinnitus Association recommends:
- Avoiding very loud noise if possible.
- If loud noise is unavoidable, reduce the time of exposure by taking breaks away from it.
- Drink plenty of fluids to ensure the inner ear circulation of blood and fluids is topped up.
- Turn down the volume of the noise if possible.
- If you cant turn the volume down, wear earplugs. DJs should try very high specification earplugs.
