Greenwood County is looking for volunteers to help put up a sign on the pier front at Greenwood Lake this spring. The county launched an initiative last year to assist first responders and help people identify where they are in the water if they get lost, stranded or in an emergency. “This will help people get oriented to the lake and will especially help people if they get lost,” said Parrish. Pier signs are color coded by region and number. According to the Parish, green represents Greenwood County, red is for Laurens County and blue is for Newberry County. “The way our delivery works is when the call goes out, they provide a physical address,” says Parrish. “Julie (Lake Manager) and her department, they already have lake ID points for each dock for billing purposes so we can use their number to put up our sign and link it back to shipping. So when someone calls and says ‘Hey, I’m on green 241 ,’ the home address appears with that number so people can respond to both land and water.”Parrish says there’s been incidents before where people got confused about where they were on the lake and first responders were sent to the wrong end of the lake.”As you speak about a mile in water versus land, you can get down to the lake pretty fast but you can’t get down there by road fast so there’s a 20 minute response time difference from point A to point B by road,” Parrish said. “In 20 minutes, if you have an emergency and are waiting for help, 20 minutes is a big difference. It can be life changing.” According to Julie Davis, Lake Manager for Greenwood County, there are over 5,000 total pier signs and several have been installed. “Half on the Greenwood side has been installed,” Davis said. “Laurens and Newberry we really haven’t started the signboarding process yet. Some subdivisions like Ridgewood Harbor on the Laurens County side have been put up by volunteers.” With more installations to be done, Parrish says volunteers are playing a big role. “Other lakes have corps of engineers they can count on to get around, they’re mercenaries or whatever, they can go around and do this all day,” Parrish said. “We don’t have that capability.” The county is waiting to continue to put up the sign until the lake level rises. In the meantime, people interested in volunteering can call the Greenwood County Lake Management Office at (864) 942-8560.
Greenwood County is looking for volunteers to help put up a sign on the pier front at Greenwood Lake this spring.
The county launched an initiative last year to assist first responders and help people identify where they are in the water if they get lost, stranded or in an emergency.
“This will help people get oriented to the lake and will especially help people if they get lost,” Parrish said.
Dock signs are color coded by area and number. According to the Parish, green represents Greenwood County, red for Laurens County and blue for Newberry County.
“The way our delivery works is when the call goes out, they provide a physical address,” says Parrish. “Julie (Lake Manager) and her department, they already have lake ID points for each dock for billing purposes so we can use their numbers to put up our alerts and link them back to shipping. So when someone calls and says ‘Hey, I’m on the green 241,’ the home address comes with that number so people can respond both by land and by water.”
Parrish said there had been previous incidents where people were confused about where they were on the lake and first responders were sent to the wrong end of the lake.
“When you’re talking about miles on water versus land, you can get down the lake pretty fast but you can’t get down there by road fast so there’s a 20 minute response time difference from point A to point B by road,” says Parrish. “In 20 minutes, if you have an emergency and you’re waiting for help, 20 minutes is a huge difference. It can be life-changing.”
According to Julie Davis, Lake Manager for Greenwood County, there are a total of more than 5,000 wharf signs and several have been installed.
“Half on the Greenwood side has been put up,” Davis said. “Laurens and Newberry we really haven’t started the sign putting process yet. Several subdivisions such as Ridgewood Harbor on the Laurens County side have been installed by volunteers.”
With more installations, Parrish says volunteers play a big role.
“Other lakes have corps of engineers they can count on to go around, they get paid or whatever, they can go around and do this all day,” says Parrish. “We don’t have that capability.”
The county is waiting to continue installing signs until the lake level rises. In the meantime, those interested in volunteering can call the Greenwood County Lake Office of Management at (864) 942-8560.
