Unclear Home Addresses Problem for Mississippi Responders
Ambulance crews complain daily of the difficulty of finding addresses, said American Medical Response spokesman Jim Pollard. AMR answers 200 calls per day in Hinds, Madison, Rankin and Adams counties and Concordia Parish, La., Pollard said.
''We hear from our own crews that it's difficult to find this home or this apartment,'' Pollard said. ''It's an everyday occurrence. We don't think of our house number as a lifesaving landmark, but it could be.''
Capt. R.D. Simpson of the Jackson Fire Department said unclear addresses have become such a problem that firefighters are seeking new ways to attack the problem. He said this includes asking neighborhood associations to urge residents to clearly post their addresses.
Chief Keith Cameron of the Crossroads Volunteer Fire Department in Hinds County said it is almost commonplace to see the wrong or no address on homes in rural areas.
To illustrate the problem, Cameron pointed to a recent call where firefighters had trouble finding a home where a smoke alarm was going off.
''They couldn't find clearly marked boxes to identify where the house was,'' Cameron said. ''Once they found the house, there was a locked gate, and they had to call the residents several times to get them to unlock the gate. It was probably 10 or 15 minutes that passed.''
Luckily, the call was a false alarm, Cameron said.
The Hinds County Sheriff's Department has begun providing elderly residents with free reflective numbers for their mailboxes, officials said.
Information from: The Clarion-Ledger