Helping Us Find You…

The Washington Community Fire Protection District (WCFPD) provides emergency address signs for all properties outside of the Washington City Limits and within our district boundaries.  This service is provided at no additional cost to all property owners in the district.  It is funded through a part of the Fire District tax portion of your Franklin County real estate taxes.  These signs serve to help find you in emergency responses from law enforcement, and EMS, as well as fire.

The address signs are installed and maintained by 6 volunteer crew members working for the WCFPD.  Each Crew member is also an honorary member and former volunteer firefighter with the Washington Volunteer Fire Company.

Each property in the district gets a black sign with the property address on it.  The signs are made of painted aluminum with numbers and arrows made of highly reflective material for better night time visibility.

Address signs on main roads will usually have numbers on both sides because emergency responders and equipment may be coming from different directions.  Signs in roads that have only one entrance, will usually have numbers on only one side. 

In some of the newer subdivisions in the district, where the individual lots are smaller and houses are closer to the road or streets, owners may elect to put their own address numbers directly on their houses or mail boxes.  In that case we recommend that the numbers be a minimum of 4 inches tall, and that they be reflective and placed on a highly contrasting background.  Another option is to have the numbers lighted.  Numbers on mailboxes should again be visible from both sides of the mailbox.  If a property owner in one of these subdivisions wants one of our signs we will be happy to provide it and will assist with mounting it if necessary.

Red range signs are also provided for all roads where multiple residences are located.  This helps responding units to locate the roads especially in the dark.  We are in the process of adding red reflective tape to each end of the road signs to help improve the visibility of the road location at night.  If your road sign does not have this addition yet, rest assured that your sign will be upgraded in the near future.  Each individual address in the road will also get a black house sign at the property driveway or entrance. 

Property addresses are assigned by Franklin County.  If a mailing address has not been assigned to a property, and if there is not a structure or clear entrance to the property an Emergency Address Sign cannot be provided.  This applies to new construction sites as well.  In order for us to install an Emergency Address Sign at a new property address, the driveway/road must be in.  If a mailbox will be installed at the driveway we prefer it to be set in place as well before the sign is put up.