Lewis County officials are beginning to discuss what steps they would need to take to eliminate and replace all dashed address numbers within the county. Such a move would be in step with other Washington counties that have made the change with the goal of bettering public safety response times and making life easier for other parties — including mail carriers and utility companies.
The number of addresses in Lewis County with a dash and another number or letter tacked onto the end is unclear, which is also part of the problem county officials hope to take on either later this year or early in 2019.
“This is a statewide issue,” Lewis County Commissioner Edna Fund said. “There are a lot of us that are working on this issue at this point. I know it will probably be difficult for some people as we move that direction, but public safety really trumps that.”
Dashed addresses often lead to confusion and misinformation during police and fire responses. The majority exist on private roads or large tracts of property, but aren’t marked properly, and the newest generation of 911 technology doesn’t recognize the non-standard designations.
Lewis County Fire District 6 Chief Tim Kinder, whose district covers land east and west of Chehalis, including Adna, said it’s the latter issue that creates more headaches for his crews.
“If you don’t put the correct addresses out there, we don’t know which one is a number-dash-3 behind a house, or dash-B,” Kinder said. “We have a few places, not too many, where we get a little confused on which is which when there are three or more structures on a property with one address and one driveway that isn’t properly marked.”
For Lewis County to take action requiring people to change their addresses to conform to a standard would require coordination with multiple county departments as well as at least one public hearing on the matter.
Centralia Police Chief Carl Nielsen and Chehalis Fire Chief Ken Cardinale both said they rarely encounter dashed addresses except when responding to requests for additional resources by county agencies. Lewis County Emergency Management Director Steve Mansfield explained why that in itself is cause for concern.
“If they go cover an area of the county, it can be more problematic for them, because they’re not used to the area at all,” Mansfield said. “Unless we’ve been there in the past and made notes in the system or have a person on the line who can help walk us through, it becomes a potentially life-threatening issue.”
Lewis County Commissioner Bobby Jackson, who lives on a property with a dashed address, believes it to be a critical issue despite the impact it would have on himself and others who may need to change decades worth of registrations and other documentation to reflect the changes.
“Some people may look at it as a hassle,” Jackson said. “We’re looking at it as a very important process. The current system is not designed for them. A place must have a street name and specific street address.”
Jackson said he’s spoken with Lewis County Community Development Director Lee Napier and state 911 Director Adam Wasserman about how to approach the issue as the county moves from informal discussions to taking codified action. Jackson sits on the state’s Enhanced 911 Advisory Committee and hopes to learn more about actions taken by other counties.
Similarly rural Chelan County adopted a re-addressing plan earlier this year that accounts not only for dashes but for out-of-sequence numbering and road names that weren’t recognized by emergency dispatch software.
There, affected residents were responsible for any costs they incurred during the process. The county assigned new names to roads with an emphasis on eliminating as many duplicate or similar-sounding addresses as possible.
Mansfield said he’s experienced public pushback on the issue before and would expect more the next time it comes up.
“It’s something that’s ingrained deep enough in our community that we have to strategically lay out how it’s going to happen,” Mansfield said. “People need to understand why it needs to happen. Everyone wants us to get where we’re going, and if we can find ways to make it easier, that’s what we need to be doing.”
