Help Firefighters and Other Emergency Services Find your Home

MCKINLEYVILLE, Calif. (KIEM) –The Arcata Fire District has launched a rural address sign project. The signs will make it easier for emergency services and utility companies to find rural residences. These signs will help firefighters, PG & E, and even FedEx find your home. 

President of the Arcata Volunteer Firefighters’ Association Roy Willis talked to us about the exciting new project. 

“Everybody’s happy to see these because some of these addresses, residents don’t have very good numbers, don’t have very good definitions. So this really helps a lot in the district,” said Willis.

The signs work on a color-coded system that communicates important information. 

“They have stickers on them for a long driveway, which is red, no turnaround, which is black, and water if there’s water available on some of the old driveways,” Willis explained. 

The signs are meant for rural homes that are hard to navigate by emergency services.

“There’s a lot of very remote homes in the district, very remote driveways, long driveways,” he said. “These are reflective, which will reflect at night. So the firefighters can see them at night.”

Grant funding allows the Arcata Fire District to provide the signs at no cost to residents. 

“We got a grant from the California Fire Foundation and Pacific Gas Electric to do this. So it’s all grant funded by those two organizations, and it’s free and we install them for free,” he said.

You can fill out a form for a rural address sign on arcatafire.org

“That form gives us all the information we need to come out and do a survey. We will measure the length of your driveway. We’ll look for access issues, and check for water availability. We order your placard, and it takes about a month to get the placards out of visual concepts. And once we do that, we come out and install them,” said Willis.