Old Tech Helps Map Sites for 911

The state of New Hampshire is taking a practical approach to locating persons who have emergencies on back-country snow trails–they’ve created electronic maps of the 1,500 miles of trails, created addresses for common points along the trails and identified helicopter landing sites for emergencies. Two snowmobile fatalities in 2002 prompted the state to improve trail identification. Dispatchers found that callers for one incident would give vastly different locations, complicating the response. Teams of state surveyors used GPS, helped by snowmobile clubs throughout the state, to create the maps. They also installed trail signs at strategic points that can be used by citizens when dialing 911 for help. Read more about the trail map project here.