Swift County plans to install emergency 911 signs

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County is moving forward with spending more than $162,500 for the installation of emergency 911 signage at rural addresses.
Law enforcement, fire departments and emergency medical services have said that those signs would enhance their ability to locate quickly the place of a 911 call.
Sheriff John Holtz, Highway Engineer Andy Sander and Geographical Information Systems Coordinator Chelsea Bagent have been working on the plan for implementing the emergency signage.
Their discussions have involved costs, placement, the size of the signs, and what information should be included on them.
After a couple meetings, it was decided that the entire address of each location would be placed on the sign, Holtz told Swift County’s Board of Commissioners at their Feb. 1 meeting. They are proposing the installation of blue signs with reflective lettering.
There are currently 2,381 addresses in the county, Holtz said. There are 1,704 rural county residences and 667 rural county non-resident addresses. There are also 467 sites marked that have no structure. These can be tree groves that no longer have buildings in them or just approaches off the road, Holtz said. There are 210 sites with a structure of some kind likely.
Of those sites, how many of them need to have emergency 911 addresses was discussed. Those places with just a grove may be owned by someone from the Twin Cities who comes out to hunt in the fall. That makes it an address from which an emergency call could be placed. There could also be a fire in the grove that threatens a nearby corn field in the fall.
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