It doesn t make sense to try to find where the address is if you don t know where the road is, he said. With our database, we have information that identifies who lives where on a particular road in a particular area. The original purpose of Whittaker s position was to identify where roads, culverts, bridges, cattle guards and other structures were located, as well as who owned them, who was responsible for their maintenance and what condition they were in. Just as he was preparing to create a computer database with all that information, Whittaker said, the fires broke out. That moved rural addressing to the top of his to-do list.
Firefighters lose valuable minutes when they can t find a house easily.
Given their lean budget, Stepper and Whittaker are trying to make the most of the resources available to them. Aside from funding for Whittaker s job, the county has no money for the mapping project, so Whittaker takes advantage of trips county workers make in the course of their job duties. When county commissioners travel, sheriff s deputies go out on patrol or the sanitarian checks on a new septic system, Whittaker often lends them one of his two cellphone-sized GPS units to place on the dashboard of their vehicle. While the device is turned on, it sends and receives signals from several of the GPS satellites that continually circle the earth. The signals, in effect, tell the unit where it is.