Personal accountability system

Personal accountability system

Abstract

It is imperative for progressive fire departments to have an effective system in place to track their personnel at any incident. Each department should have a system that begins tracking their members upon arrival at the station, or at the scene, and continuing through operations at an incident. Department cannot have an effective personnel accountability system if it does not operate under the framework of an overall incident command system. Proper use of the incident command system, including the accountability system, will reduce freelancing, thus reducing firefighter injuries and fatalities. The problem was this department did not have an effective department wide policy with regard to accountability. The purpose of this research paper was to develop a plan to develop a department wide policy adopting a personnel accountability system (PAS). This procedure was accomplished first, through literature review, by having examined what current Pass other departments were using. Then, system was chosen that could be easily integrated into our incident command system. Introduction

Accounting for the whereabouts of people and personnel is paramount in all aspects of work and school environments. School teachers, managers and supervisors must keep watch over their charges. Accountability is found everywhere, for example in school, it was just called attendance. Attendance was taken every morning and in every class to make sure students was where they belonged and were not missing or absent. If a student needed to leave class for any reason he or she were given a hall pass to their destination and must check in when they arrived at their destination. If there is any type of emergency in school then attendance or” personnel accountability” is the first item that was performed at the student's assigned meeting location. Accountability was ingrained our brains as children. At home, parents do their best to have “accountability” of their children at all times.

Background

When the Lauderdale County Fire/Rescue Services adopted the ICS and made it standard operating procedure (SOP) (300.4, 1992) it helped our department coordinate all types of incidents within a manageable span of control. Part of its purpose was to promote safety. Our department, however, has been very lenient toward the proper use of a verifiable PAS. A reason for this may have been the fact that the SOP scarcely mentioned personnel accountability. Another reason could have been that in the past, locally, there have been no serious firefighter injuries or deaths as a result of not using the accountability system properly. Also, upper management has not been effective in promoting, training 3 and supporting accountability. Consequently, this department's training, since the inception of ICS, has focused primarily with the overall general objectives of the ICS. Not very much emphasis has been placed on the accountability component. Although each of the members was issued individual name tags, no formal or intensive training took place to teach the members how to use those tags.

Lauderdale County, Texas, is a diversified city whose major economy comes from numerous businesses that ...