Don’t Hide Your House Number

Driving around Cape May County, you’ve likely noticed that a majority of the fire departments in our community have display signs in front of their firehouse. By this, I mean the signs that normally designate what a location is, and features an area beneath that which a message can be displayed – either digitally, with sliding tiles, magnets, or other methods.
Most of these signs feature community events, important dates, and brief, catchy messages. Sometimes, they are used to remind of fire prevention techniques, to honor a fallen member, or to simply let the community know a fire department is actively thinking about their community.
But driving past one of these signs last week, a seemingly simple phrase caught my eye: “If you can’t see your address, we can’t see it either.” While the phrase may seem simple, the more I thought about the backstory and true meaning to the phrase, I realized how important it is to the fire service as a whole.
For those of you who don’t quite understand what the phrase is saying by simply glancing at it, it’s referring to the fact that if your address is clearly displayed so that you could see it pulling up to your house or property, firefighters and other emergency personnel responding to your address wouldn’t be able to locate it either.
How many times have you had relatives from out-of-state, or even just slightly removed from the county, have difficulty finding your house? You’ve likely even given them directions yourself, giving them key landmarks and things to look for, such as “We’re the second house on the left,” or “The row of pine trees and the white picket fence is in front of our house.”
If your family and friends have a difficult time finding your home with your own directions, imagine emergency personnel responding to your property with no prior knowledge of your address, none of your own directions, and no landmarks to follow.
In addition, time isn’t of the essence for the average visitor of your home – passing an address while during an emergency costs valuable time, and could be the difference between life and death.
If you’ve never been involved in an emergency situation on the side of the emergency responders, you’re unaware of the sheer amount of things that are going on at once while responding to an incident.
Take a fire apparatus responding to your home for the report of a fire. On any given initial response unit, there’s likely to be around six firefighters. That’s six firefighters who are preparing their personal protective equipment, gearing up in SCBAs and air masks, listening to the radio reports from the dispatch center, listening to instructions form their superior officers, and formulating plans upon their arrival – often times to the sound of a siren, air horn, and subpar lighting conditions.
The driver and firefighter who is riding in the front passenger seat – referred to as “the officer’s seat” in the fire service because it is normally the position where the highest-ranking firefighter that is responsible for radio communications is seated while responding – is also taking in all of this chaotic noise, in addition to ensuring the location of the emergency and the safe response of the apparatus.
The driver has plenty of things to worry about while responding, from simply avoiding common road hazards, driving safely around traffic that has pulled over, listening for apparatus-positioning updates, and monitoring the apparatus’ gauges and lighting. The last thing the driver should be worried about if having to determine whether they’ve arrived at the right address.
Things are much better in regarding to arriving at the proper address thanks to advancing in technology, with many emergency apparatus containing GPS devices that pinpoint responders to the approximate location of an incident.
However, GPS devices aren’t a sure-fire way to locate an address. Most people have used GPS’s and are aware that even though you can punch the exact address you’re attempting to get to in, you still have to locate the entrance to that property once you get there, especially in areas where there are numerous driveways and other property entrances present.
Knowing this, one of the easiest fire prevention methods for homeowners is to make sure their address is clearly displayed at the entrance of their properties. Mounting your address on a post, mailbox, or even the side of your house in large,
easy-to-read numbers is an easy, inexpensive way to ensure emergency personnel arrive on location to your property as quickly as possible.
Homeowners should ensure that the location of their address is visible from both directions of their roadway, and can easily be seen at both day and night. Mounting reflective numbering, or placing a light on your address are easy ways to combat nighttime sight difficulties.
An easy way to determine whether your address is sufficient is to drive past your home from each direction, both night and day, and see if you can see your address upon your approach. If you can’t, knowing where it’s located, firefighters who haven’t seen your address prior will have an extremely difficult time locating it.
Don’t let countless moments go to waste during an emergency because you didn’t tree the brush around your address, didn’t make sure it was visible at night, or didn’t bother to post it at all. You never know – those seconds could be the difference between you or a loved one’s survival.
Knoll, 19, of Eldora, can be contacted by email at bknolljr4cmcherald@yahoo.com . He is a student at Rowan University.