The IAFC encourages fire departments across the country to participate in its annual Fire/EMS Safety, Health and Survival Week, June 19–25. This year's theme concentrates on fireground survival, and will include an online fireground-awareness training course.

Created by the International Association of Fire Fighters, the Fire Ground Survival (FGS) program is a comprehensive survival skills and mayday-prevention program available to all members of the fire service. Incorporating federal regulations, proven incident-management best practices and survival techniques from leaders in the field, and real case studies from experienced firefighters, the FGS program aims to educate all firefighters to be prepared if the unfortunate happens.

Topics covered include:

• Preventing the Mayday: situational awareness, planning, size up, air management, fitness for survival, defensive operations.
• Being Ready for the Mayday: personal safety equipment, communications, accountability systems.
• Self-Survival Procedures: avoiding panic, mnemonic learning aid "GRAB LIVES" — actions a firefighter must take to improve survivability, emergency breathing.
• Self-Survival Skills: SCBA familiarization, emergency procedures, disentanglement, upper-floor escape techniques.
• Fire Fighter Expectations of Command: command-level mayday training, pre-mayday, mayday and rescue, post-rescue, expanding the incident command system, communications.

Find tools for Safety Week events on the Planning and Fire Fighter Survival Resources webpages.

In addition, the National Fire Fighter Near-Miss Reporting System has again created a supplemental program to correspond with the fire components of the FGS program. Download PowerPoint presentations and grouped near-miss reports from the Near-Miss Resources webpage to help with training during the week.