Help Us Help You
When you need help, you want it to get there as quickly as possible. Whether it’s a police emergency, a medical emergency or a fire, you want emergency personnel to get there fast. Minutes can seem like hours as you wait for help. Help usually arrives within minutes but there can be some delays. One delay that happens a lot is emergency personnel not being able to find the correct house. Police, fire and medical personnel often rush to a call for help but when they arrive, the houses are not clearly marked with an address. Police often respond to 911 calls only to find several houses with no address or house numbers painted over or obscured by shrubbery. This causes delays in figuring out which house the call came from. Precious time is wasted knocking on doors or trying to figure out the address number sequence to find which house the call for help came from.
If it’s only 1-2 unmarked homes and the address sequence is fairly regular, it’s not a real big problem. But if several homes are unmarked or it’s a rural area with homes spaced far apart, it takes time to find the right house. If it’s a real emergency, seconds could mean the difference between life and death. If someone breaks into your home in the middle of the night, you don’t want the police several doors down knocking on the wrong door trying to figure out which house you live in. Or if you have a medical emergency, you don’t want the paramedics passing by your house because they couldn’t find your address.
Help Us Help You. Whether you rent or own, or live in a home or an apartment, you can do something that can save time, or maybe a life. Go outside and look to see if your house is clearly marked with an address. Trim shrubbery or put up new numbers if you have to. Your local hardware or home improvement store carries everything from inexpensive stick-on numbers to fancy wood numbers. Plastic numbers with small nail holes are inexpensive and a quick way to mark your home. Just remember to have contrast; white numbers on a white house will not be visible. Some house numbers may have been painted over in years so put up new numbers, or paint the ones you have so they stand out. Some charities go door-to-door offering to paint address numbers on the curbside in front of residences. This is an inexpensive and highly visible means of identifying the residence address. Or you can do it yourself with paint and number stencils.
Placement and size is critical too. Small numbers high on a roof peak or hidden behind shrubbery won’t be seen. Place the numbers on the front of your residence, on a garage pillar, or the wall closest to your front door. Mounted underneath or next to a porch light or driveway light is great because it will be illuminated at night. You can even buy an illuminated address light that stays lit all the time. It simply wires into your doorbell wiring so it’s inexpensive to light (12 volt) and it becomes illuminated at night. If you already have one of these, please check the two light bulbs to make sure they are not burned out.
If you live in an apartment, put-stick on numbers next to your front door or on a wall so it’s visible from the street or parking lot. Some apartment numbers are difficult to see and time is wasted as emergency personnel walk around looking for the correct residence.
Fancy or plain, inexpensive or decorative, the choice is yours. Whichever choice you make of making your address clearly visible will help save time. Don’t put it off. Check today. Don’t wait for an emergency to occur and wonder why it seems like help is not coming. When the call for help comes from your house, make sure the emergency personnel responding is able to clearly see your address and stops right at your house without wasted time. Help Us Help You…….
Trying to help keep you safe with another safety tip from NetCopsPSI
