The City of Hamilton and first responders have started a campaign urging farm owners to register properties to better emergency responses to rural lands.
Farm 911, also known as The Emily Project, builds on an eastern Ontario initiative connected to the death of a seven-year-old a decade ago on a family farm.
“This program will provide our firefighters a way to quickly identify the access points to these properties, when seconds count,” fire Chief Dave Cunliffe explained in a statement.
Enrolment involves the free installation of a red and white address sign at a field access point near roadways, making it easier for emergency services to locate a property.
The sign, placed on properties without a municipal address, provides a GIS location code that can be mapped through a GPS.
After Emily Trudeau fell out of a tractor family farm in nearby Hastings County in 2014, family members called 911 but an ambulance couldn’t find the property.
On the day of the accident, someone had to flag down the first responders from a rural road.
Three years later, the first Farm 911 sign would be installed on an acreage owned by a volunteer firefighter in Northumberland County, not far from the tragedy.
“If you’re driving down this road and you have a car accident and there are no other driveways around, you’ll say, ‘Oh, there is a yellow and black sign,’ and police, fire, and ambulance can respond to that,” firefighter Allan Carruthers explained in a 2014 interview.
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