Pocahontas rural mail route customers to get new addresses

Marlinton, W.Va. – People living on rural mail routes in Pocahontas County will have a new address as soon as this winter. The change comes due to completion of the county’s 911 mapping and addressing project. Engineer Doug McKenzie reported to the county commission on June 28 that work at the county level has been completed, and the new addresses submitted to the Post Office for incorporation into their database.

McKenzie say the Post Office will mail out change of address notifications – probably this winter.

“All the rural addresses have been converted and sent to the Post Office for mail-out notification of the change of address,” he said. “The time of notice from the Post Office will probably be the winter, February or March of next year. It takes that long, usually, to float through the Post Office’s system. They’re kind of backlogged.”

The engineer describes the purpose of the 911 mapping and addressing.

“Well, they’ll be able to get parcel post delivery,” he said. They’ll be able to get deliveries from the UPS, Fedex people of the world. And they’ll be able to get first responders there when they need them – very quickly, because they’ll have a physically locatable address. So, when you pick up a telephone, your address is actually transmitted to the 911 center, when you pick up and dial 911. So, they know, when you pick up the phone, where you are.

“If you pick up the phone and you’ve got an invader in your house, and you can’t even talk for fear of being discovered, but you need 911 there now, and all you can do is pick up a phone and push 911 – they will get to you if you have a physical street address.”

RR and HC box numbers will become a thing of the past.

“It won’t be box numbers,” McKenzie said. “Everybody will have a physical street address. If they were HC 99 Box 33, their new address may be 123 Sesame Street.”

Pocahontas County 911 Director Shawn Dunbrack tells some of the new road names.

“Route names can no longer be based on just numbers,” he said. “They will have things like – Route 219 will now be Seneca Trail all throughout the county. Route 84 will be Pocahontas Trail. Route 92, going into Frost is called Frost Road – Route 92 all the way to the Dunmore intersection, and then when it joins with Route 28, it becomes the Potomac Highlands Trail.”

McKenzie replaced former contractor Matt Taylor on the 911 addressing project this spring. McKenzie started work on March 1 and kept his promise to the county commission to have the work done within six months. The county paid McKenzie $87,260 to finish the mapping and addressing project.