does anybody have trouble finding houses?

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Our emergency call takers (who are also the dispatchers) always ask for the nearest cross street, just for confirmation. They don't need to ask, as they're shown a street map on screen as soon as the address is keyed into the CAD system. By pager we're given the address and the two nearest cross streets. This works very well for us in the suburbs. But the asking for the nearest cross street doesn't work as well out in the country, where the nearest cross street can be a long way off! In my area, unless a call is to one of our major roads, we'll always look the address up on the street maps (we're given the map coordinates on the original pager message). Winding roads, tight corners and dead end streets are just a way of life here too!

Getting familiar with our own area is essential. But familiar will never mean that you know every single street of course. Unless you live in a place with very few streets that is! We have people who've lived in the area all their lives, and been members for 20 or more years, and they don't know every single small street.

Familiarity with your area , a good CAD system used properly, and backed up with a street directory! Works for us. Still leaves the problem of people not having their street number clearly visible from the road of course.
We have a subdivision of larger more expensive houses in one of our rural areas that pulled out all of their rural fire district signs. Now we've got CAD, but sometimes it doesn't always work and we've got to hunt for a house. It also doesn't help when people don't put their house numbers where they can be seen from the street, or don't make them a contrasting color so they just blend in with the color of the house!
im sure there are house in every city township or where ever that sme people cannt find but thats where i feel that as frist responders we should with the support of our city and township officals encurage thoses lil green sighn with the reflective numbers to help make it a lil easyer to seek tou adresses
My answer is No.

I have a computer in my truck with CAD and GIS mapping that shows the streets, house and property boundaries with address numbers, the driveway cut and nearby hydrants even owners name..... So I can ask the dispatcher for the callers name or research it off the CAD but I usually count driveways from the nearest cross street off the computer and tell my driver it's the 3 rd driveway on the right or 4th on the left, etc. The house number is our ultimate confirmation once you pull in, unless of course there is FIRE showing baby.
We had an assist call on Ferris Rd. Well route 141 has several names, most of which are miles long and sadly for us Ferris Rd is only a block long part of Route 141. We got badly lost, ended up in the city of Wilmignton (3 miles away) on back roads. We gave up and headed back to the firehouse and guess what......drove past the house with all the other stations there! Talk about being embarassed. I promised myself it would never happen again. Now they call me Rand Mcnally. :o)
Isn't technology great? There should ALWAYS be an old school back up too, paper street guide and familiarity.
We have CAD but also an old school map book. Sometimes even the latest technology can fail. Stay safe!
not so much in my town but in the town over where we do alot of mutal aid its more rural and more and more developments are taking over and sometimes i can be hard to find the streets
We are in the process of getting each firefighter a map and also put a map in each truck. Most of our firefighters know where the roads are.

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