Lack of signage hampers efforts of first responders

First responders in Panola County are often delayed in their responses because people don’t place their E911 address — their “street” address where it is visible from the road.
We often hear exchanges between a deputy sheriff who is attempting to respond to an emergency and the E911 dispatcher who has radioed the address. As the officer attempts to locate the house number, he or she finds a number leading to the location. Then the next number the officer sees tells him that he’s gone past it, so the officer must backtrack, counting unnumbered houses to make a best guess at the location.
Sheriff Dennis Darby said the lack of numbers is constantly a problem for officers. The county is big with many miles of roads exclusively in the jurisdiction of the sheriff’s department. Even though most deputies have lived in the county for years and know most roads well, they are dispatched to locations by E911 numbers that too often are not visible anywhere at the location.
For MedStat ambulance drivers, many of whom are less familiar with county roads and locations, the problem is compounded. During recent meetings with the Panola County Board of Supervisors to answer complaints about long ambulance response times, MedStat officials pointed to the lack of identifying numbers as a contributor to the problem. Sheriff Darby said that deputies, once having located an emergency’s unmarked location, are sometimes caught between staying inside the home to render immediate aid or other service or going back to the side of the road to flag down the ambulance crew that has followed, also attempting to locate the unmarked address.
Sometimes E911 numbers are posted on the sides of mailboxes placed in roadside clusters at the entrance of subdivisions. The numbers need to be posted on the house as well, ambulance personnel said. In other locations, the numbers are placed conspicuously on the house, but the house is located at the end of a long driveway and the numbers are not visible from the public road.
The county has an ordinance that E911 addresses must be posted and visible, but its enforcement mechanism is limited. Panola E911 officials are working toward a plan that will make more numbers visible on houses. One solution might be to add a fine for non-compliance, perhaps issued to a homeowner or renter when an emergency response is delayed as a result of no number. That’s our suggestion. Supervisors working with E911 officials and the sheriff can construct a well-thought county ordinance that will promote compliance and improve emergency response times at no cost to taxpayers. It might also save a life.