Vermilion Parish, LA Noise from Specific Sources: Car Alarm Limits (2026)

Section 26-68(5) of the Vermilion Parish Code sits in the Police Jury's noise control article and singles out alarms. It reaches an exterior burglar alarm and/or fire alarm of a building or motor vehicle. The duty is a wiring requirement, not just a response time: the alarm must be wired so that it terminates its own operation after initial activation. The cutoff is five minutes when the sound is emitted without interruption and ten minutes when the sound is emitted intermittently, which covers the chirping and pulsing pattern of many vehicle alarms.

The last sentence of the subsection adds that, at all times, the limits set forth in Table I of § 26-65 do apply. Table I is the parish's maximum permissible sound level chart, and it differs by property type and by hour. An alarm that shuts off inside the time limit can still violate the parish code if it is louder than Table I allows at the property line of the receptor property.

The article applies to sound originating from, or received by, any property in the unincorporated areas of the parish, so a neighbor's complaint in a subdivision outside Abbeville or Kaplan falls here, while an alarm inside a municipality falls under that municipality's rules. Section 26-67 lists exceptions to the article, among them emergency work and national warning systems used to warn of flooding or hurricanes, but § 26-68 opens by declaring its standards apply notwithstanding §§ 26-65 and 26-67, so the alarm cutoff is not displaced by those exceptions.

Enforcement runs through § 26-69, which sorts violations into major and minor. An alarm that has not been the subject of an enforcement action in the preceding 12 months, and that is not the result of willful, reckless or grossly negligent conduct, is a minor violation.