PERSONNEL ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM

UNION FIRE DISTRICT STANDARD GUIDELINE

S.O.G. No.: 01-002 Revision: March 2007

Effective Date: May 1999

1. PURPOSE

• 1.1  In the interest of the department member’s health and safety, this document is established to provide guidelines maintaining a safe work environment.
• 1.2  This guideline identifies a system to account for all firefighters, at any time, within incident area.
• 1.3  Use of a Personnel Accountability System will provide personal safety for all firefighters, and will provide the Incident Commander the ability to track firefighters.
• 1.4  Accountability involves a personal commitment to working safely at an incident. It will be the responsibility of the individual firefighter at an incident to keep their supervisors informed of their activities and location. Freelancing will not be permitted and can lead to injury or death.

2. REFERENCES

• 2.1  Union Fire District Board of Wardens Policy
• 2.2  NFPA 1561 the department shall implement a Personal Accountability System at hazardous incidents.

3. PROCEDURE

• 3.1 To enhance accountability and to improve tracking of firefighters at an incident, a two (2) tag system will be used. Tags will have the roll call number of the firefighter imprinted on them.
• 3.2 Each firefighter shall place one of their tags on the apparatus ring assigned to the apparatus they are riding on prior to leaving the station.
• 3.3 Upon arrival of the apparatus, the apparatus ring shall be delivered to the incident commander or his/her designee. The ring will be hooked to the mass accountability ring. This mass ring will hold the tags of all arriving firefighters on UFD apparatus.
• 3.4  If a command post has not been established on scene prior to the arrival of the first engine or truck company their location will serve as the command post until another post is established.
• 3.5  The incident commander may assign an accountability officer to collect the apparatus rings and place them on the mass accountability ring and take control of the status board.
• 3.6  The second tag will be attached to the status board as a firefighter is assigned a specific task at a determined location. The status board will contain only the tags of those crews assigned a task. This board will have the job, location of the crew, and time in and time out. The Accountability officer shall be in contact with interior crews at all times to be sure of last location and assignment.
• 3.7  Crews or individuals finishing a task will retrieve their tags from the status board after advising the incident commander.
• 3.8  Firefighters arriving in their personal vehicles will bring a tag to incident commander/accountability officer to be put on the mass accountability ring. This tag will not be attached to an apparatus ring. This will be an indicator to the incident commander/accountability officer which firefighters responded in their own vehicles.

4. ACCOUNTABILITY EQUIPMENT:

• 4.1  Each firefighter shall have two (2) ID tags on their turnout coat prior to responding to any incident.
• 4.2  Each UFD vehicle shall have an apparatus ring.
• 4.3  Each UFD chief officer shall have a mass accountability ring, status board, and grease pen in their vehicle.