Friday, January 18, 2008

Fire Call .... sort of

Posted by Reverend Ref + at 1:53 PM

I responded to a "smell of gas" call this morning. Luckily it turned out to be nothing major; the home owner had simply vented things improperly, and that is easily fixed.

However, the real problem came in trying to find the house. The numbering system around here is . . . well . . . less than ideal, and there often is a whole lot of, "Oh, that's the old Jones place." Not always helpful.

So as I'm driving to the call, my partner and I are looking for this house. Drove by the place TWICE. No numbers on the house. A barely readable address on the mail box.

They said, "Yeah, we saw you go by. We were up here waving to you." Maybe standing on your front porch 50 yards off the road isn't the best place to be flagging down EMS vehicles. Try standing . . . oh, I don't know . . . IN THE ROAD.

So we told the homeowners, "Go get some big numbers and put them up. And paint your mail box."

Then we went home. And now I'm back to doing Friday housework.

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3 comments:

~**Dawn**~ | 2:40 PM, January 18, 2008  

Sounds like giving directions in New England: "Well see, ya make a right at where that ol' glass factory used to be. My grand daddy used ta work there back before the war ya know. Then you follow that til you get to the Barnes place. Just past that you be-ah to the left. Make a left at yer third Dunkin Donuts. Go past the kid selling fire works. You bettah keep close to the centah of the road there or you'll hit them there pot holes. The house yer looking for is just past there, on the left, behind some evah-green trees. Used to be yellow when I was a kid. Good luck!"

Anonymous | 6:33 PM, January 18, 2008  

Back in PA when I was growing up they implemented a new system for house numbering. Same numbers, but there were new rules about where they were displayed and how "fancy" they could be. You could have your fancy numbers, if I recall, as long as someplace else there were black-on-white or white-on-black numbers, prominently displayed.

I heard a lot of grumbling from home owners but never heard if it made a difference for EMS types.

Anonymous | 6:34 PM, January 18, 2008  

Too bad you don't know anyone, say, on city council who could make such a proposal...

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