Once again there have been reports of pig deaths due to fires in production facilities. Earlier this winter I wrote about communicating with your local fire department regarding details of your production site, maps of facilities, etc.

I recently came across a new computer application for local emergency responders that has great potential for all of our rural sites. Developed by the National Farm Medicine Center in Wisconsin, the application is called Farm Mapping to Assist, Protect and Prepare Emergency Responders (Farm MAPPER).

Farm MAPPER is an interactive web tool that explores using Quick Response tags (QR codes) to provide onsite information about hazards and physical layouts of agricultural operations. While still in development, the idea of having a farm contact point for emergency information is very appealing.

The idea is that there would be a QR code on a post or mailbox at the site entry point that emergency response personnel could quickly scan with a smart phone that would link to a web site containing the most recent site maps, contact info, etc. While still under development this is a project that I’ll follow with interest.

You can follow the development of this emergency response tool at the following web site: http://www3.marshfieldclinic.org/nfmc/?page=nfmc_farm_mapper

What have you done to improve the ability of your local emergency responders to respond when an emergency happens at your production site?