Emergency responders now have access to new mapping system

Mapping of all of Vernon County's roads is completed and that information is now available for the Nevada Police Department dispatchers when they send emergency services personnel on calls anywhere in the county.

In addition to developing new Vernon County road maps, Tim Bourassa, Vernon County's Geographic Information System technician, told members of the Vernon County Local Emergency Planning Committee Wednesday that he has also generated other layers of data that can be overlaid on the road system to show a variety of useful information.

For example, he said that he can make maps showing the roads broken down by townships, others showing the boundaries of each school district, or zip codes. These maps can then be overlaid on maps showing elevations or 1983 flood data.

He said that he had to produce the information for the 1983 flood data layer because it did not exist in a digital form.

Bourassa said that he has just received the materials to make books and large county maps with this information for each emergency response agency in the county and expects to have them completed in about two months.

"They will have over 200 small maps in each book, as well as aerial photographs," he said.

However, he said that it will be about a year before he will be able to produce similar products for sale to the public.

"I will be spending most of my time in the field checking GIS locations for addresses," he said.

Bourassa said that so far he has completed about 20% of the addressing for Vernon County residences.

"I have gone as far as possible using aerial photographs. Now I'm ready to start driving the 1,000 miles of Vernon County roads to each house," he said.

Bourassa said that when he is finished with this, every house in the county will be given an address that matches with the information in the E-911 system.

According to an estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau there were about 9,100 houses in Vernon County in 2006.

"I expect to be finished by the end of the year," he said.

When he has generated the GIS coordinates for every house in the county he will generate an address for each of those houses.

When the addressing is complete, Bourassa will be sending a large digital file to the post office with the address changes and then the post office will send a post card to each resident with this address change.

Bourassa said that when the is completed each emergency response agency will be able to attach specific information to each location that they would find useful. For example, people on oxygen, people with special needs, the presence of hazardous materials, or any other information that would be beneficial when responding to a particular location for an emergency.