911 Addressing - Beausoleil First Nation

 

Introduction and Background:

In an emergency it is vitally important that emergency responders: emergency first responders, firefighters, peace officers and paramedics, can quickly, efficiently and confidently find the location they are responding too. Over the years, there has been an influx of new emergency responders coming to Beausoleil First Nation to provide services. Mapping concerns and confusing 911 civic addressing presents a significant public safety concern for the collective emergency services. BFN EMS in partnership with APS, Beausoleil Fire & Rescue Services, Lands, Housing, Administration & council have been working on a re-development of 911 signage, and ciivic addressing. This program began last year with important ground work completed by summer students of APS/EMS. Students worked on civic addressing by collecting GPS coordinates for each residence and major landmarks on Beausoleil First Nation.

Purpose and Objectives:

This project will decrease response times and mapping error and increase response capability with clear and uniform civic addresses.

This project will improve the response time for emergency services to respond to an address on Christian Island and Cedar Point for all locations within Beausoleil First Nation. Civic addresses will have a uniform address which will be visible and clear for all emergency personnel and service providers (water, hydro, phone, health). This will increase confidence in community members that service providers can confidently find their location, improving public safety.

Project Scope and Implementation:

This project will ensure that 911 Civic Address Signs are uniform and visible on all occupied property, residences and businesses on Beausoleil First Nation including Christian Island and Cedar Point. This will include the renaming of roads to eliminate duplication of street names to prevent error and improve public safety. (An example would be Negig Lane and Negig Street, both located on Christian Island.

Further it has been identified that the current 911 Civic Addressing does not provide any future growth and we have seen duplicate addresses and addresses such as 1A, 1B, 1C. We want to eliminate these scenarios to prevent confusion and improve public safety. Nearly all current Civic Addresses (Numbers) will be changed. An update with your address change information will be sent to you prior to the addressing change formally takes place. As an example, currently there are 399 Civic addresses assigned to Kate Kegwin Street, when this process is complete 805 Civic addresses will be assigned or available for Kate Kegwin Street. We are trying to map and plan this out effectively to provide future planning options and prevent future changes to addressing.

A highlight of this project is to help re-introduce the Anishinaabe language into the community. One visual and constant manner we can help with this, is with community addressing. As an example, by eliminating the English Word: Road, Street, Lane, Crescent and replacing it with Miikan, we are able to accomplish this small task. This helps reintroduce the language by using Miikan (Road/Street).

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