Giving every bit of land a 911 number
NO MATTER IF YOU’RE urban or rural, you have a house or building number to help the pizza delivery person or first responders find you.
For the most part, you determine how visible that number is to the rest of the world.
In some cases, I suspect it may be easier to find rural addresses now that a civic address system is in place for rural properties. At least in the country there are consistently identifiable green number signs at the end of driveways.
Conversely, in town, I’ve seen shuttle bus drivers using high-powered spotlights in the dead of night to try to find a house number on poorly-lit residences and streets.
But in the country, there’s still a problem. There, you get a civic address if you have a building on your property. However, what if a situation arises – a farm accident, for example – out in the field? Or, if you’re a hiker and you get in trouble on a trail somewhere?
Trying to explain concession numbers can be tough. As Grey Bruce notes on its emergency services webpage, in emergency situations, people are often unable to accurately
describe where their rural property is located and how an emergency vehicle can find them. Their heightened level of anxiety and the pressure of the situation creates its own roadblock.
So this fall, municipalities in eastern Ontario have started stepping forward to help Ontario’s Farm 911 project for emergency signage for agricultural land get off the ground.
The initiative, named “The Emily Project” after seven-year-old Emily Trudeau, who died in a farm accident in 2014, is designed to promote the idea that emergency addresses and signage are important for vacant rural land, including Ontario farm fields.
The situation around Emily’s death underlines the current problem. First responders had trouble finding her accident site because it happened in a field, on land that didn’t have signage at its entrance or an emergency address that could be found through GIS.
A nine-person project committee has been working for the past 18 months on the Farm 911 project. It was officially launched in the summer at the Hastings County Plowing Match, and recognized at this year’s Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) convention in November.
The initiative is starting to get some traction. Project committee member Resi Walt, OFA member services field rep for Hastings, Lennox-Addington, Northumberland and Prince Edward counties, says this winter, Northumberland County and its seven municipalities are implementing a cohesive system.
And Prince Edward County will be working the project into its 2018 budget, she says.
Walt says the project has received tremendous moral support from the farm community and from emergency responders. Now, it needs more municipalities to step forward and commit to assigning civic addresses to farmland without buildings and land such as woodlots, trails and sugar bushes.
Walt estimates each address entrance sign will cost a municipality $20$30. In a recent survey of 100 OFA members, respondents said they had as few as two entrances, and as many as 10 entrances to their farmland. As well, participating municipalities would need to dedicate some administrative costs to assigning the addresses.
To Walt and her committee, the cost and the exercise itself is reasonable.
“Municipalities often talk about what they can do to make emergency response more efficient. This would definitely help.”
Walt encourages farmers to contact their municipalities directly if they believe the project has merit.
“Once some municipalities take the lead, others will follow,” she says.
Information about the project can be found at www.farm911.ca.