By BRENDA TENBOER
When help arrives too late, the outcome can be tragic.
Several years ago one Manderson resident died from a heart attack with two ambulance crews — one dispatched from Big Horn County and the other from Washakie County — frantically searching for his home.
“We don’t want to see that happen ever again,” said county planner Jim Waller.
EMTs in Big Horn County are professionals who take great pride in quick response times and saving lives, but still at rare times and through no fault of their own, are unable to reach a patient in time.
Fire markers at most rural homes have long faded beyond recognition or are missing all together and rural roads for the most part were unmarked until recently when a $200,000 project approved by the State Loan and Investment Board came to fruition.
Waller said the project has a tentative completion date of May 30.
“Hyattville will be done a little later because of the water project that is happening now,” he explained. “Byron is 95 percent done. In the south it’s a little more sporadic.”
Surprisingly, some residents are unhappy about the project that is designed to help ambulance crews, firefighters and law enforcement find people in crisis, Waller said.
“We’ve had people who were angry about where the markers were installed,” Waller said. “Some said they were going to pull them up.”
Waller and County Fire Marshal Brent Godfrey urged residents not to remove the markers, because they literally can save a life.
“I’m not sure why people complain except that it’s a change,” Waller said. “The markers are there to help them.”
Folks with complaints about address marker locations are asked to call the planning office at 568-2424 and the contract engineer will be notified of the need to relocate the address markers.
The markers and new road signs were expensive to install, Waller said, and in cases of regular wear the county will pay for maintenance and replacement costs. If someone destroys a sign or fire marker intentionally, destruction of public property charges can be lodged against the guilty party, according to Waller.
“If someone gets a DUI and takes out a road sign, we are going to ask the county attorney to include $250 restitution in addition to the fine,” Waller said.

BHC grid layout

The Big Horn County Rural Addressing Policy was adopted in March 2008 and is based on the original grid layout of the county, Waller said.
Lane 1 is one mile south of the Montana state line and all “Lanes” follow the same pattern running east and west.  Road 1 is one mile east of the Park County line with all “Roads” running north and south.
The system works well for emergency responders, according to Sheriff Ken Blackburn.
“I’ll get a call in the middle of the night and know immediately if I hear ‘Lane 47’ I need to get to Burlington,” he said.
The addressing committee, at the time the policy was adopted, voted to fix incorrect addresses as they were discovered.
“We are trying to correct some of the mistakes out there brought to our attention by the phone company or some other entity like the fire department,” Waller said.
In some cases, staff of the county clerk’s office many years didn’t understand or follow the grid system, which is based precisely on distance and mileage.
“Since we actually started the address sign project in 2003, we have changed 120 addresses total,” Waller said.
“Seventy-six of those addresses have been corrected since the fire marker project began mostly because of duplicate addresses or alpha-numeric addresses.”
Lewis Brothers Subdivision in Lovell and Bench View Estates also near Lovell have had the highest concentration of addresses inconsistent with the grid layout, according to Waller.

Road signs

New signs have been installed on many rural roads — both county and private.
The initial plan, according to Waller, was to have different colors and shapes to designate private or county ownership.
“That’s a task easier said than done,” Waller explained.
The end result is a mix of the shield-type and other road markers.
People should not panic if they find a road sign on their private road, it’s simply there to help emergency responders locate a residence or specific location.
“It doesn’t change legal ownership,” Waller said. “It in no way means the county is trying to take over a road.”
The new road signs and markers do come with other advantages.
UPS and FedEx deliveries are now easier for carriers to make, Waller said.