Street Naming and Housing Identification Project for Emergency Services

08/01/2018

The Public Safety Unit wishes to inform the Community that various community organizations are forming a Working Group to create a Kahnawà:ke Housing Identification System (GPS mapping) to enable emergency responders to quickly and efficiently identify where assistance is required using a universally accepted logic based community plan.

Though the goal is to officially name all of the streets in Kahnawà:ke and identify all buildings, there is no plan to install street signs. Residents will be informed of their location that will uniquely identify their home for emergency services and will have the option of posting or not posting their number. Public building identification numbers will be posted as reference points.

Currently in Kahnawà:ke, when a person calls for an ambulance, fire, or police, they tell the dispatcher their name and describe where they live. The dispatcher then has to relay those directions to the responders. The new system will allow the dispatcher to give the responders a physical address entered into a GPS system to locate the home quickly using modern technology.

“There is a longer term goal of implementing a reverse 911 type of service,” said Arnold Lazare, Director of Public Safety. “This would enable the emergency dispatcher to see where the call is coming from and have the ability to reconnect if disconnected.”

Further uses of this could be for home mail delivery through Canada Post for companies that do not deliver to post office boxes. Currently, there are street names identified through various applications such as Google Maps, but those names are inconsistent and sometimes wrong as they are created by the application, not by the Community.

It should be noted that the project is a work in progress and no decisions have been finalized at this time. The Committee is being formed to review unnamed areas, number each building and review street names that have conflicting names. There will be consultation with the community in the near future once a system has been fully developed. If the Community wants physical signs, that is open for discussion but not the purpose of the initiative.