Hub City Lions are driving donations while helping emergency responders get to emergency scenes in a hurry with 911 Reflective Address Signs.
911 Reflective Address Signs are highly visible day or night and are made of the same aluminum and reflective vinyl as road signs.
One of the things that slows down emergency responders is that they often cannot find a home’s address numbers at a time when every second saved counts.
“Quite often people don’t even have an address posted on their house or it’s obscured by plants and vegetation or the numbers have fallen down, so we run into it fairly commonly,” said Capt. Brian Cripps, of Nanaimo Fire Rescue. “If it’s a fire it’s fairly self-evident, but 65 per cent of our calls are medical in nature and not everyone comes out and waves their hands to flag us down.”
Hub City Lions hopes to cut the time it takes to confirm an address by selling as many of the 15 by 46 cm signs as possible.
The signs sell for $40 each. Lions members put the numbers of the house address on each sign before they are taken to be installed on homes, gates and fences.
“Our biggest challenge is nighttime and trying to find the addresses,” said Lance Stephenson, B.C. Ambulance superintendent. “Lots of times people use decorative lettering. It looks good on a home, but its very hard to find with a spotlight at night.”
The reflective lettering and background on the signs show up brightly under an emergency vehicles’ search light.
Hub City Lions has an initial trial order of 100 signs for sale, which will be available Saturdays at a Lions’ sales booth at Nanaimo North Town Centre. If that order sells out, Hub City Lions will continue with the program.
“It’s a community service as well as a fundraiser,” said Peter Thomas, Hub City Lions secretary. “We feel selling these signs could save a life.”
For more information or to order a sign, please call 250-754-2729, 250-754-8577 or 250-729-7860.
