Voices

House numbers: safety not just for you but for your neighbors, too

GRAFTON — You can appreciate that having house numbers visible from the road, day or night, is extremely important for fire and rescue personnel to respond to your home in the event of an emergency. What you may not appreciate is that it is equally important to your neighbors.

Imagine rolling down the back roads of Grafton at 2 a.m. looking for house number 1234. We use the fact that 911 addresses have been laid out so that house number 1000 is 1 mile from the intersection, but that's not easy to get 100 percent correct while driving briskly, looking at the odometer, in darkness, with adrenaline flowing, and so on.

We get to where we think we are a little over about a mile in, and we see a driveway. There's no house number. Is it 1234? Do we spend the time to go down an often long driveway to perhaps find out this is not the location of the emergency - while your neighbor just down the road is waiting for us to respond?

Please put house numbers at the road that we can see at any hour - if not for your safety, then for the safety of your neighbors. Thank you!

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