House Number Changeover
As I go down the streets in Oliver I am trying to understand the lack of progress in the change over from the old house numbering to the new and it scares me.
Some houses have their new numbers up and the old one taken down. Way to go
Folks! Like me, you are ahead of the curve and want to be the first to get things done.
Some others have displayed in a prominent spot (usually a front window) the new paper version of the number, along with their old number still up on the wall. Then of course there are many houses without any number at all, which is really scary.
I feel sorry for the fire department and other emergency services who have to try and sort it out, especially when the dispatchers have been centralized and probably don’t have local knowledge of the streets either old or new. From a third party perspective it must look pretty much like the proverbial Chinese fire drill. The consequences of all this being that in an emergency lives could be lost. Pretty serious if you ask me.
The question I have is simply this: what enforcement measures are in place to see that this rather huge undertaking is getting done in a timely manner. Are the seniors and other incapable of physically changing their numbers being looked after? Is there a protocol for this? What about all the rental units? What about the absentee owners? The more I think about it the more it looks like it’s a pretty haphazard situation.
Maybe years from now I will look back and say I was just being paranoid, but in the meantime I truly hope someone is facilitating the process.
For what it’s worth, the accuracy of our emergency dispatch system suggests that
said dispatcher is somewhere in the Phillipines.
Publisher: Dispatchers are in Kelowna and Kamloops. I would not rely on GPS or computer based systems. For fireman I suspect once an address is given in this area – they can pinpoint it.
I live up on the sub (rez) we had 3 digit and road name addresses. RCMP and ambulance still had hard time finding us. Then a couple of yrs ago GPS mapping was done and we were all given a 5 digit number and rd name (some reason my road name was changed in this switch). This was supposed to make things better, but RCMP and ambulance still cant find us (its worse now). When my brother-inlaw had a heart attack, we called 911, we gave them both address trying to explain where we were, they ended up telling us to send a vehicle down the road and flash the lights to show them where to go! Just recently there was an emergency and RCMP could not find the address! I watch the signs changing in town and think how can that change be better? It seems more confusing now than ever.
Just to say . We live in Rural Oliver we do not even have our new Street sign up. So do we put up our new number with the old street ? So we are leaving as is until we get a Street Name !