Photos to aid 911 maps

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The county’s intent is to rid itself of addressing mistakes for emergency first responders.

Work will move north through the rest of the county for the next 11 months.

‘‘The photograph is just a way to capture data” and to verify addresses, said Jeff Edgin, project manager with the county’s information technology department.

Some properties have more than one address and sometimes can’t be found on 911-response maps. Other large properties have many homes on them, but only one address appears to dispatchers. ‘‘Some barns have addresses on them,” he said.

All the data collected will be provided to emergency responders, Edgin said.

County government contracted Geographic Technologies Group for $436,550 of grant funds to do the field work and its employees will be provided with photo identification badges and will not need to collect information from home owners.

It is estimated there are about 60,000 homes to check.

Once the work is complete, first responders will have a photo of a home and directions sent to their equipment when responding to a 911 call. Dispatchers will be able to identify landmarks to get responders to the scene of an emergency.

‘‘It will just speed things up tremendously,” Edgin said.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland will provide a prototype for the kinds of multi-unit buildings that are common in Lexington Park, California and Great Mills.

‘‘It’s a good project for the county,” and it will provide better triangulation coordinates for those calling 911 from a cell phone, Edgin said.

Work is set to begin either on April 1 or April 7.

Commissioner Thomas A. Mattingly Sr. (D) is an active member of the Leonardtown Volunteer Fire Department and said addressing errors do exist out in the county. ‘‘I wouldn’t say it’s common, but there are problems out there.”

For example, on private roads, five-digit numbers are often found on posts, but not on houses. A burning house is easy to find, he said, a house with a person having a heart attack inside is not.

For those concerned about invasion of privacy, Mattingly said, ‘‘It’s not someone getting out in front of a house and taking a picture. I’m not sure they intend to go down private roads.”

In a memorandum from Bob Kelly, the director of the county’s information technology office, to the county commissioners, he wrote, ‘‘outlines of all building structures can be created and addresses verified which will pinpoint the exact location of an emergency call. These outlines assist dispatchers in directing emergency vehicles to homes that may not be visible from the roadway or not currently addressed in the county’s property layer.”

He added, ‘‘The data collection called for in the contract will consist of a vehicle with GPS recording equipment and cameras driving the county. There is no need for our contractors to be on private property and generally they will not need to exit their vehicle while performing their duties.”

St. Mary’s County implemented five-digit addresses for homes and businesses in 1993 and began eliminating duplicate road names.

On June 20, 1977, St. Mary’s County became the fourth in the state to get 911 emergency service.

County government’s Web site has an interactive tax map of St. Mary’s that provides topography information, aerial photos, zoning information and property boundaries.

Maps to people’s houses can be found at sites like www.google.com just from a person’s phone number. ‘‘All that information is all over the Internet already,” Mattingly said. This project is not being used to scrutinize anyone’s property, he said.

Kelly wrote, ‘‘Concerns have been raised that county government has ‘gone too far’ with this project. To the 911 caller that does not live in a properly addressed 911 residence or lives at an address that for some other reason is not properly identified in our system, the criticism would likely be that ‘we have not gone far enough’ — unless this project gets completed, we will not know of these locations missing from our system until we receive the 911 call. It’s too late by then.”

jbabcock@somdnews.com