Standard Addressing Project ****HELP

[Chief1701]

I am seeking information regarding Standard Addressing.Our company protects a rural area of approx. 75 sq miles. The main souce of addressing comes from the postal service in the way of box #'s or rural route #'s. As we all know this does us no good in trying to locate an emergency. We are contemplating taking on this standard addressing project to assign a # to every house/lot and to name streets and make sure they are marked. I am looking to hear from those of you that have undertaken the same project with regards to how you went about it. Any information is appreciated.

Stay Safe!

Dave Klitsch
Penn Forest Twp. VFC#1 (PA)
klitsch@ptd.net

[SPFDRum]

Chief, check with your county Emergancy Services Coordinator, or equivelent, about the E911 (enhanced) system. If that system is in place or scheduled to be implemented, they will be required to adopt an addressing system for the service area.

[Chief1701]

The county currently operates under 911. It is not operating E-911 yet because not all municipalities have standard addressing. There are currently 2 that don't have it, one of which is us. Thanks for the suggestion tho.

[Rayr49]

We addressed a county that is larger that some states. Hrer are a few things that may help.

1. Get the post office involved in the early stages. They will have to approve addresses if the mailing address changes from an RD to a street address.

2. There are a number of companies that specialize in addressing at a fairly reasonable cost. They can also provide maps and map books. Check with the county director of equalization. The may have worked with some of these companies.

3. Generate publicity on why addressing is needed. This project should be a joint effort from fire,ems and law enforcement.

5. Use existing street and road names. If a sreet does not have a name, let the residents suggest names.

6. Be prepareed for some rumor control. We encountered rumors that it would cost everyone over a thousand dollars if they had to change to a street address for mailing purposes. This was based on changing addresses on things like checks and letterhead. We also had a few who felt it was another "big brother" move.

Good luck

[Dalmatian90]

Our town switched to standardized numbering around 1989 in conjunction with Connecticut's statewide implementation of E-911.

Copies were made of the Town's Assesor's Maps which show the roads and all lots in large scale (about 40 11x17 sheets). I'm not sure who, but I think it was hired out to draw lines along each road at 50' intervals -- not a hard job, just awful repetive.

A three person committee made up of retired people was set up and they drove around town and assigned each house a number. Many houses were fairly easy to decide, but sometimes they had to make judgement calls. They agreed to a basic set of rules and went out applying them.

Basic rules:
All numbers radiate from Town Hall (which is surprisingly close to being dead center in our town)
"1" on each road is on the end of the road closest in road mileage to Town Hall -- a few of the roads were surprising which end "1" ended up on!
Each house got the number closest to being lined up with the front door.
Houses near intersections got numbered on the road to which their front door pointed. (That occassionally messes us up when the front door faces one road, but the driveway is on the other)

We also changed local zoning to require a minimum of 50' of frontage & no more than 2 house per driveway, unless a true road was built. We still have a lot of common drives that were grandfathered, but it slowed the growth of these common driveways were 3, 4 houses share a 1500' or longer driveway.

[Engine5FF]

When our city went to 911, the addresses were updated using the lot lines on the tax assessment map. The properties were counted and the numbers were assigned acordingly to keep them in as orderly a patern as possible.

[BFD101]

While I would hate to take on such a project after watching how detailed our county E911 addressing was, I will add this:

Be sure that whatever you do, a local ordinance is passed requiring everyone to comply. More importantly, make sure you put some teeth in the enforcement of posting these new addresses. That is our problem. Everyone is using their addresses, but only a small percentage in our rural areas have posted them on their mailbox or on a sign post in front of their homes. Going through all of the work to do this and not have the people put them where you can see them will be frustrating, not to mention cause response time delays. I liked the sign in front of a fire station in a northern Indiana city I saw several years ago: "It's 2:00am and foggy....can we see your 911 address?"

[d308fd]

I would advice that you go with the letter number system and not names.

This way you know A is before B from one direction and that 1 is before 2 in the other direction. Whereas Johnson is where from Virginia Rd.

Hope the info helps
D308