Where firefighters come to talk training
Accountability
At a recent full scale exercise I was the fire controller and an old acquaintenance of my was the evaluator. This was an IED type exercise at a school football game. Initial response was from the Twp. PD who did an excellent job of taping off the area and controlling the scene. The fire department arrived on the scene with a command vehicle, turned on the big green light and never stepped foot in it again. It was hard to watch an incident like this because the safety of responders was in jeopardy all of the time. Although there was an accountability officer, only about half of the responders had tags, consequently it was never clear who was where.
This brings up a huge problem in a mutual aid situation. When you call a mutual aid company for mutual aid, their well being is placed in your hands. But beyond that what that mutual aid company does has an affect on your people. Most areas have a county chiefs association at the very least, take a stand on accountability and Rapid Intervention Teams as well as personal accountability.
While writing the after action report, I did a little research on accountability. I found one piece of software, I'm sure that there are more, that I thought was pretty slick. It's called In Site Accountability System and is presented by Vernon Software. It's very user friendly and compatible with PASS devices. It is also very user definable and easy to use. The developer was very helpful also. Look it up at Vernon Software Systems. I know I mentioned it before,but I think it's good.
But, beyond that, if nothing else, get a legal tablet and keep track of your people, it's not a big city thing.
This brings up a huge problem in a mutual aid situation. When you call a mutual aid company for mutual aid, their well being is placed in your hands. But beyond that what that mutual aid company does has an affect on your people. Most areas have a county chiefs association at the very least, take a stand on accountability and Rapid Intervention Teams as well as personal accountability.
While writing the after action report, I did a little research on accountability. I found one piece of software, I'm sure that there are more, that I thought was pretty slick. It's called In Site Accountability System and is presented by Vernon Software. It's very user friendly and compatible with PASS devices. It is also very user definable and easy to use. The developer was very helpful also. Look it up at Vernon Software Systems. I know I mentioned it before,but I think it's good.
But, beyond that, if nothing else, get a legal tablet and keep track of your people, it's not a big city thing.
Tags: accountability, par
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Comment by Brent Sanger on July 9, 2009 at 1:35pm - In my county there are 6 individual fire departments, and therefore 12 different ways of doing things. My department is slowly coming around to more modern methods of doing things. Part of that comes from a progressive thinking chief who knows what he doesn't know and allows those that know more than he does on different subjects the latitude to teach the subject to everyone else. Accountability is one of those things. having only a few members helps a lot with this, as it makes accountability easy to track. The problem for us lies, as mentioned above, with mutual aid departments. They have their own way of doing things. Fortunately, the department that supports us the most is very much in line with our way of thinking, and we train together often. for the rest of the mutual aid departments, the other department that supports us runs on the "freelance" system. That is where everyone shows up and just does what they feel the need to without ever checking in with Command for instructions or guidance. How do you correct behavior like this? Other than pray nothing happens on your scene. Their chief is very old school, and doesn't care who's toes he steps on to get it his way. You approach him with issues like this and he adamantly denies there is a problem. Other than terminating our mutal aid agreement with them (which won't hurt us but WILL hurt them badly), what can we do? Any advice on this issue will be most welcome.
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Comment by Todd McKee on July 8, 2009 at 6:07pm -
Robert
One thing that we found use for mutual aide groups that do not enforce accountability, is that we have a dry erase board and a marker to track scene members. It has seemed to work in the past as most rural departments do not have the means of a lap top for software versions. Another, thing I think we forget about on scenes is the proper command staff. I am currently looking into having a command team dispatched on all working structure fires. Let me know what you think! Take care
Your friend
Todd
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