Gwinnett County Fire and Emergency Services says knowing exactly where you are when you call 911 can mean the difference between a fast response and a delayed one — especially during summer outings at places like Lake Lanier or on hiking trails where a street address may not exist.
What’s Happening: The department is urging residents to think about their location before an emergency happens, not during one. Knowing your home address is not enough if you spend time at parks, lakes, trails, or other spots where addresses are hard to pin down.
What’s Important: When calling 911, officials say giving more than just an address helps. Useful details include:
- Whether you are inside or outside
- Whether you are upstairs or downstairs
- A nearby landmark or trail name
- Which direction you are traveling
An app called what3words can also help. The app breaks the entire world into a grid of small squares, each identified by a unique combination of three words. That three-word code can be shared with a 911 dispatcher to pinpoint your exact location when no street address is available. More information is at GCGA.us/What3Words.
How This Affects Real People: Summer is when people are most likely to be somewhere unfamiliar — a trail, a campsite, a boat launch. Those are also the places where a 911 call is hardest to locate without extra detail.
The Path Forward: Gwinnett fire officials are asking residents to download location tools and practice describing their surroundings before they ever need to make an emergency call.
B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.
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