ATHABASCA - The residents of Westwind Park can breathe a little easier as Athabasca County and Alberta Health Services seem to have got to the bottom of a potentially dangerous situation that saw ambulances dispatched to the incorrect addresses.
Reeve Larry Armfelt requested an update on the situation at the subdivision just south of town at county council’s July 14 meeting, after hearing the concerns of several residents who saw emergency vehicles go to the wrong home due to confusion with the address system of different coloured signs.
The white signs are linked to the legal description of the lot and mark the CC valve location. The blue signs are linked to emergency services. The two numbers on any given lot also do not match each other.
“We looked into this and followed up with AHS. When all of our rural addressing went into AHS and they put it into the system, for whatever reason the white signs were put into the system instead of the blue signs,” county manager Ryan Maier told council.
That is why, when the ambulance was called June 23 and given the emergency number of 37, they ended up at Lot 37, which has an emergency number of 61. In that scenario, EMTs were told they were at the wrong address, but still had to gain entry to the home to verify it was empty.
Maier also said he wasn’t exactly sure when the correction will come in effect, as AHS refreshes its address system on a quarterly basis and he wasn’t aware of when the last update was performed.
“Depending on the timing, we could be waiting three months before this is updated,” he said. “When this is updated and we receive confirmation, what we will likely do is write a letter to the condo association, strongly suggesting that they remove their white signs because there is really no reason to have those white signs, and they create the extra confusion.”
He added there has been some resistance to removing the white signs in the past, so he wasn’t sure how that would go over with residents.
Armfelt said he was glad to see it was “getting squared away, because I was pretty surprised when this issue came up again.”
Chris Zwick, TownandCountryToday.com
