By Adam Wallworth
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
JASPER, Ark. — Ambulance drivers being able to find the business end of a 911 call is just one benefit of assigning physical addresses to every house and business in Newton County.
The county is the last in the state to convert to “center line mapping,” a prerequisite to getting enhanced 911 service, said Shelby Johnson of the Arkansas Geographic Information Office.
“The current addressing they have in Newton County is still using the antiquated postal route and box or highway contract route,” said Johnson, state geographic information officer. “With that kind of addressing, it’s not a locatable sequence, or a system that you and I - average everyday people - could locate by.” Johnson said the county is moving away from postal, or highway contract routes, which don’t correspond with a physical location. He said the county is working toward having addresses based on specific locations that are sequentially numbered.
“If you have an ambulance dispatched to 3205 Newton County Road 40, that tells the driver they’re going roughly 3,205 feet down that road, to wherever they’re supposed to be,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the two biggest hurdles the county faces are naming the streets and mapping them. He said that waiting until now has provided one benefit - the ability to use digital mapping software.
Once the county is mapped, Johnson said, the software will calculate the addresses, so it won’t have to be done manually.
Newton County terrain is among the most rugged and rural in the state, but that wasn’t the reason for the delay in changing to the new system. The real issue was money, said Assessor Sheila McCutcheon.
She said total project cost is about $277,000. With the help of grants from state agencies, it should be complete in about two years, Mc-Cutcheon said.
Since August, deputy assessor Amber Garrison has been overlaying road maps from the U.S. Forest Service with aerial photos provided by the state in an attempt to map the county roads.
Sitting in front of a battery of computers in the historic county courthouse, Garrison plots the roads, which she occasionally has to drive out to inspect. Any road longer than 500 feet or having more than three houses will be labeled a county road.
McCutcheon said a fourperson committee will decide how to number the roads.
Once the mapping is complete, McCutcheon said, crews will visually confirm that locations correspond with addresses. Then equipment can be purchased that will allow 911 dispatchers to locate calls made on wireless phones.
McCutcheon said land lines will follow wireless phones because county residents have never voted to add the 911 surcharge to their phone bills. Once that happens, she said, the county will be able to establish a 911 system that will pinpoint the origin of emergency calls.
For now, McCutcheon said, a person can call 911 but must provide directions to their location.
OBVIOUS BENEFITS
Washington County has had 911 for 20 years, having gone live with it in September 1988, according to the county’s Web site.
Chances are that even an accidental 911 call in Washington County will elicit a knock at the door, said John Luther, director of that county’s Department of Emergency Management.
Luther said that even wireless calls are pinpointed within 100 meters, so rescue workers can find someone who might be disoriented. He said it also helps people passing through.
A traveler staying at a hotel may need an ambulance, but not be able to give directions, Luther said. With the enhanced 911 system, visitors don’t have to.
Luther said the system shows the address on a map, which can be brought up on a laptop in the ambulance.
Establishing the system is difficult, but once in place it is easy to maintain, Luther said.
“I can safely say they’ll get service quicker and more efficiently,” he said.
PROBLEMS SURFACE
The need to make the transition to physical addressing became obvious during the ice storm last January, said Peter DeChant, Newton County emergency management coordinator.
DeChant said power was knocked out to water pumps that fed the water towers. He said the area water district needed to get power to the pumps to keep pressure in the lines and sought help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
FEMA had generators but wouldn’t deliver them without physical addresses, DeChant said.
County workers thus had to scramble to make educated guesses as to where the pump stations were, then write the addresses on pieces of cardboard and attach them to spikes they pounded into the frozen ground.
“We just did what we had to do,” DeChant said.
Even with the makeshift signs, it was a challenge getting electricians, or people with fuel, to the generators once they were on site, DeChant said.
ALL-DAY JOURNEY
Emergency management workers aren’t the only ones who’ve had to get creative when in Newton County.
United Parcel Service drivers have an intricate set of handmade maps they’ve made over the years, said Ronna Branch, a company spokesman.
The maps use landmarks to guide drivers through the rural routes, including directions like “turn at the tree.” “They guard them with their lives,” Branch said of the maps.
Regular drivers know the routes, but replacement drivers, for holidays or sick days, have to rely on the maps to make deliveries. The routes also take about an hour longer than the average eighthour route, Branch said.
The average UPS driver makes 200-500 stops a day, she said, but the two Newton County drivers made a combined 133 stops Tuesday, with one working 9 1/2 hours and the other 8 1/2 hours.
It takes a little longer to drive a route that requires driving 7-8 miles down a dirt road, then backtracking, said UPS driver David Farmer.
“It can be an all-day journey,” he said.
Farmer said he’s created his own maps by drawing roads on manila envelopes, then making an “X” at each spot he makes a delivery.
It took a few years - and the aid of a veteran driver - to learn the route, Farmer said. He knows where many people live because he grew up in Mt. Judea and still lives in the county, he added.
“It would be a chore if someone didn’t know where they were going. It would be next to impossible to deliver something,” Farmer said.
He often calls friends or family members to find houses.
“If I don’t know ‘em, someone in my family knows ‘em,” he said.
Copyright 2009 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.