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How visible is your house to emergency services?

Alert message sent 13/05/2022 13:18:00

Information sent on behalf of Neighbourhood Watch

From Monique Munroe, Chair
Canford Heath Neighbourhood Watch and former Hunt the House project leader

Hunt the House was a project run by the charity formerly called Ideas2Action (now Win on Waste) in 2016. It aimed to highlight the major problems emergency services face trying to locate the relevant property when responding to calls.

To help highlight this, four volunteers (working in pairs) from Canford Heath Neighbourhood Watch tested out the ‘find-the-house’ exercise. This involved them going out in pairs to find house numbers in various roads. One pair went to one address and timed themselves. They then added a larger, more visible number and the second pair had to find it. The journeys were timed. When more visible house numbers were attached it showed they found them faster, one by 2 minutes and another 1 minute 35 seconds. Precious minutes and seconds which would could save someone’s life.

A retired paramedic also very kindly helped with the project and offered the following advice and suggestions which were passed on to Canford Heath Neighbourhood Watch members:

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
“Is my property readily identifiable?”
“Could a member of the emergency services find my property quickly in the dark?”
“Is my house number easy to read on my outside wall or property?”
SOMETHING TO AIM FOR:
THE GOOD NEWS HOUSE FOR THE EMERGENCY SERVICES
The “Gold Standard House” is one where the numbers are BOLD and CLEAR. If you have an outside wall or boundary fence, then please put the name or number of your house here. “I can assure you that at 2 in the morning, such a simple measure really does assist the 999 services. As a rule, large dark numbers on a light-coloured background show up best.”
You can also buy reflective house numbers which work well in the dark.
BAD NEWS HOUSE FOR THE EMERGENCY SERVICES
This is a house where there is an outside wall, but no number and a long driveway with the house number hardly definable in the distance. “So much time is wasted trying to locate a number in these circumstances.”
GATES
If you have your number or name of your property on a gate, the gate may be open and therefore the number isn’t visible.
HEDGES AND OTHER VEGETATION
Please cut back any overgrown bushes or hedges as these often obscure your number.
WHEELIE BINS
It helps the emergency services if all your wheelie bins (this includes, black, blue and green bins) have numbers on the front and back of the bin. Locating a house is made so much easier when residents make the effort to do this when the emergency services attend properties on bin collection days.

Message sent by

Alyson Moore (NWN, Police, MSA, Dorset)

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