Emergency vehicle or Christmas lights?

We went to pick up a pizza tonight and were coming up on the town square. They had had the tree lighting ceremony and they put up those flashing Christmas lights. As we approached, I was thinking that they had done a particularly bright display this year. Got closer and realized that there were four emergency vehicles by one of the churches.

The thing is that with those new emergency lights, you really can't tell the difference from a distance! Then the officer directing traffic had one of those green light wands but it was so dim by comparison that we couldn't tell what he was trying to tell us to do. We could barely see the road. It was like a Christmas light assault.

Sounds quite confusing.