Published: March 26, 2009 09:24 am      

911 addresses moving along

Moving ever closer to completion is an effort to bring new mailing addresses to most of Garvin County as part of a 911 system on the way.

The new addresses for a couple of area communities should be coming soon as the push continues to move forward to establish a countywide 911 emergency telephone system.

Set for early April are address mailings for both Maysville and Lindsay, said 911 coordinator Diann Williams.

In fact, the whole process is moving at a nice clip as the new addresses have already been completed in Elmore City, Stratford, Wynnewood and various other parts of the county.

First up on the list of mailings, being done one zip code at a time, was EC several weeks ago.

That was because that area of the county had the highest percentage of surveys returned as part of the process of establishing the long-anticipated countywide system.

“Elmore’s went smooth. In fact, all the little places in the county went smooth,” Williams said earlier this week.

All that remains is a date for rural areas around Pauls Valley.

“We don’t have a release date for Pauls Valley yet,” she said, adding that is expected to come in one to two months.

The new addresses are mostly for residents in the county who live outside a city limits.

The addresses are part of the work started last summer to collect the Global Positioning System (GPS) information from each rural residence.

Also needed were surveys left at each residence, which are used to determine who actually lives at each residence.

The information from both the GPS readings, done by officials of GeoComm Inc. of St. Cloud, Minn., and surveys are then placed in a computer data base.

That will eventually be used to create a digital mapping system to help guide first responders to specific locations when a 911 call is made after the system is operational.

Even with the new addresses Williams warns residents they can’t put it to use until given the official OK later on by the U.S. Postal Service.

“Each person’s new address will be mailed out. They cannot use it until they’re notified by the post office,” she said.

That simply means residents currently using a rural route and box number for mailing purposes will begin using their new addresses only after the Postal Service eventually sends final notification for mail, as well as for the Enhanced 911 (E-911) system.

Postal workers will deliver both the route/box and new addresses for one year.

After that time the route/box information will be dropped with mail delivered to only the new addresses.