By Mary Standard
The Sun Journal
HARTFORD, Maine — Buckfield Rescue Chief Lisa Buck made a plea at Thursday’s selectmen’s meeting for people to use their land line phones when calling in an emergency.
Last week, an emergency call came from the home of Tom Adams for assistance for a grandchild who was not breathing. Using his cellphone, he gave the physical address as Moses Young Road. The ambulance GPS could not find the road, she said.
“When you use a cellphone, there is no way to track your location. If you use a land line, that gives the responders an automatic location,” Buck said. “When you use your cellphone, the call first goes to the state police dispatcher, who then sends it to the Oxford County dispatcher, and precious time is lost.”
Buck also noted that calls have been lost in the transfer.
Adams said his road has four names: Moses Young, Burgess, Glover and Davenport. Moses Young is off Labrador Pond Road but does not show up on the GPS maps.
Board Chairman Lee Holman said one of the problems is that most maps still show Russell Road as a through road or a continuation of Labrador Pond Road in Hartford. Russell Road was closed a few years ago when a bridge, located on Sumner’s section of it, was deemed unsafe and removed by the town of Sumner, she said.
In other news, selectmen voted to require contractors to give the code enforcement officer at least 24 hours notice when he is needed on a building site.
Selectman Jack Plumley said he called the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and was told that boaters should throttle down when they are 200 feet from buoys marking the swimming areas at Hartford beach, and shut off their motors at 100 feet. The boats should also have a Hartford guest card on them to indicate they are either owned by town residents or guests of town residents, he said.
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