I wonder if the example of what FINTAN has done in Britain could be followed in Ireland?
It is an innovative approach to adding to rescue knowledge.
The UK Ordnance Survey and the British Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) have a database called FINTAN, which they describe as helping to create a “vernacular geography” of names known by local people but which have not been listed officially by State organisations.
After five years of work it has built up 6.000 place names known and used by local people, but not until now listed officially. The purpose is that they could be used, if needed, in emergency operations. which could be used both for emergency calls to the Coastguard and to land-based 999 emergency services.
According to the MCA, in emergencies callers can often use nicknames for beaches, rocks and other local areas, for which the names on official maps are different or mightn’t even exist, making the identification of incident locations difficult, so the initiative has been used to close off such loopholes in safety coverage
Some unusual names are listed in FINTAN’S database, including Crazy Mary’s Hole, Nuncle Dicks, Sausage Island and Stinky Bay.
Whatever about the last three of those names, I wouldn’t like to be calling for help and giving the first name as my location to the emergency services! Listen to the podcast below:
