Mapleton Fire/Rescue recently completed the Rural Property Identification Project throughout the township.
On July 25 Fire Chief Rick Richardson told council a co-op student from the Wellington Catholic District School Board worked on a project to identify all the emergency numbers, or green numbers, in Mapleton.
Property owners who are missing emergency numbers will be notified and have a set amount of time to install the number, he said.
If the time lapses the township will install the number at the owner’s expense.
Though not a requirement, Richardson also said that when there’s more than one residence on the property there should be A and B numbers, or two completely different numbers.
He added that because the department travelled all roads in the township for the Rural Property Identification Project, they also looked for possible “driveway drop locations” and identified the type of structure on the property.
A “driveway drop” means water is relayed from the road to the pumper on the scene of a fire.
“When … the laneway is … away from the road we won’t be backing the fire trucks down the road and back … because you can’t get any other vehicles in there at that time,” Richardson said.
“It also eliminates the problem of tanker trucks getting stuck in the laneway in the winter time and then you’ve got no water so it takes care of a lot of the problems.”
The project also identified which properties had old bank barns, new barns, older houses, newer houses, silos and grain bins.
“It was strictly done from the road, the only ones we went down the laneway were the ones that we could not see the property at all from the road,” Richardson said.
“So they were done strictly for our figures at the fire hall.”
The department is scheduled to implement computer assisted dispatch (CAD) systems in the fall. All the data gathered through the Rural Property Identification Project will be uploaded and used in the CAD system.
The data gathered will also help to identify which fire department is meant to respond to the call Richardson said.
Councillor Dennis Craven asked how firefighters would have access to the information gathered when they respond to a call.
“One of the advantages of the CAD program … in the future we can have tablets in, probably the rescue trucks because they go to every single call, which will aid you in knowing how to get there in the best way and where roads are closed now; we have a lot of road closures, you can put them on the CAD system and say don’t go that way,” Richardson said.
“The CAD system will also tell you the ones with the driveway drops.
“We’ll tell you ahead of time, old-style barns, new-style barns, new house, water supplies, where the newest water supply is, so this new information could be done from tablet to truck and … it could appear at dispatch also.”
Council received the report and approved the notification of individuals missing green identification numbers.
