What if you wake up tonight with a strange pain in your chest. It’s difficult to breathe and you’re suddenly sweating profusely. You or your spouse fumble for the phone to get help quick. The 911 operator tells you help is on the way after you confirm your address. Help is being dispatched and some of the firefighter/EMT’s live nearby so surely they will be there soon, right? While you wait, you think about your house and wonder if it is as easy to find as you get more stressed. It is easy to find for most folks, they all know generally where you live, don’t they? You get mail every day and your Amazon packages from UPS and FedEx keep showing up so it must work, right? Does it really matter that the numbers are faded, worn, or missing on your mailbox? Is it worse that your mailbox is nowhere near your house on a shared road? Is it raining, too?Too often help is dispatched quickly for such calls but responders have trouble finding a good address number to tell us which driveway to follow or the correct house on a shared driveway The time of day, weather, and daylight can’t always be in your favor. You may have seen vehicles with flashing lights turning around hurridly seeking an address that is poorly marked. It happens often enough. Turning around takes a bit of time for responders when YOU are anxiously waiting for a lifeline to arrive. Even if you have good address numbers to find YOU, do your neighbors have good numbers to keep us from accidentally driving down THEIR driveway seeking your location? We hope you all have good numbers. We do.If you aren’t sure, we hope you will evaluate your address numbers very soon. Make sure they are displayed well from any direction of travel. Make sure your mailbox flag doesn’t cover the few numbers that matter most and ask yourself if they are effective enough to get help quickly. Reflectivity is a bonus. Those decorative bronze, brass, or black address numbers on a brown wood post don’t reflect any light at night. It just slows us down to try to ready them.You get to decide how fast someone can help you or a family member in an emergency. A little bit of thought now can help us find you in the future. Finding you quickly or help us move on down the road to our dispatched address is the goal. If you need some help, please call our Address Ambassador Marcella Grimmett at 501-912-4211 to get one of the great Red and Reflective 911 Address Signs (pictured below and located all around our district) to make sure you are ready for an unexpected emergency. They are always unexpected. The cost for the sign is $15 or you can make your own for less. Do what works best for you so you can be found quickly. To those of you that already have great address numbers, THANK YOU!Stay safe.
