Agenda - 02-04-1991 - Laserfiche WebLink

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5 COMMUNITY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION AWARENESS PROJECT PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The Caldwell Fire District in northern Orange County is a rural, farming community. The Caldwell Volunteer Fire Department is within 5.5 road miles from the furthest residence it serves. The Orange County Rescue Squad is 16 miles away. The department is all volunteer and has a First Responder unit for rescue and medical emergencies. There are seven hundred and fifty residences in the district. There are twenty -five volunteers who serve these residences and a Board of Directors elected by the community. Emergency response times range from 4 minutes to as much as 15 minutes. Minutes or even seconds saved within this time window to shorten arrival time can be critical. The Board would like to address two ideas that would improve response times for these volunteers, increase community awareness of emergency communications and ultimately save lives and property. Fir • During the past year, Orange County began to change its address system from rural routes to a numbering system. Each residence has been assigned a new numbered address along with a street name. Each address has either three or four numbers. The Caldwell Fire District which covers several rural routes was officially reassigned numbers in October 1990. At that time Orange Central Emergency Communications started to dispatch all fire and rescue calls to street number locations. Since the renumbering, our fire department and the First Responder unit have experienced delays, sometimes serious, when responding to residences that have no affixed street numbers on their mailboxes. Also, some residences are unaware of their new street numbers and give incomplete directions when an emergency is called in. The Fire Department would like to provide the street numbers for those who have not numbered their mailboxes, and if necessary affix the numbers to those residences who request it. second: The Caldwell Fire District boundaries border two other counties, both with different telephone exchanges. Some of these exchanges overlap into our district and an emergency call to Orange Central is long distance and cumbersome. Some residents are not aware of the fastest and safest procedure to call Orange Emergency. The Fire Department would like to provide fire district signs at the 911 emergency boundaries of our district and include in the mailing an information sticker targeting all those outside our 911 district, but within our fire district boundaries. Proper dialing procedures for emergencies will be explained. Included with each explanation will be a sticker with a space for the resident to fill in the street address, and another space for the proper dialing procedure. It will be suggested that the sticker be affixed near the phone.