Pin Pointing the Emergency

THE Kingdon Ponds Rural Fire service is calling on local residents to download the new ‘000’ app on their phones to help them pin point the location of emergencies and improve response times in the area.

Dave Coe, captain of the Kingdon Ponds Rural Fire Service said the app provides GPS coordinates and removes the confusion of finding addresses in country areas, which can help in all emergency calls.

“Most of time an actual address is so hard because there are RMB’s and lot numbers and different interpretations of addresses and even the names people call roads can be different to what it is on the map, so that’s why for us it is much easier to be given GPS coordinates,” Mr Coe said.

“If we are given a map location we may not be familiar with that location so we need to research it and find it on a map which takes time, whereas with a GPS location we can go straight there and takes the human error out of it,” he said.

“For example there is Dartbrook Road and Upper Dartbrook Road, Dartbrook Road is near Aberdeen and Upper Dartbrook Road is out towards Bunnan and we’ve had calls to Dartbrook Road when it has actually been Upper Dartbrook Road and that can be 20 minutes half an hour wasted by going to the wrong road so it can make a significant difference,” he said.

“Nearest cross streets don’t work very well when the nearest cross street might be 10 kilometres away and the recent accident on the New England Highway, the nearest cross street given was Gundy Road and so that is why Fire and Rescue responded because it was called in as being in town, but it wasn’t it was three or four kilometres out of town, so that’s where the addresses become confusing,” he said.

“For accidents we have problems where the first people on scene might not be local and they are not sure where they are, we’ve had call outs to north of Scone,  when it was actually south of Scone and when you are unfamiliar or you are at an accident and not thinking clearly you can just give the coordinates from your phone to the operator and it’s great, it tells us exactly where to find you,” Dave Coe said.

The free phone app is available for iPhone and Android: Download Triple Zero Ap now.