It's a mutual aid system that is simple and it works. In fact, it works so well that the Illinois Mutual Aid Box Alarm System is one of four systems that will help establish the benchmark for response across state lines.

Created in the late '60s in Elk Grove Village, Ill., MABAS was designed to provide mutual aid to departments in Chicago's northwest suburbs. Over the years, the system has grown from 200 departments in the early '70s to more than 1,200 in 2007. In 1998, it partnered with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.

Every participating agency in MABAS must sign the same contract, agreeing to standards of operation, incident command, minimal equipment staffing, safety and on-scene terminology. All MABAS agencies operate on a common radio frequency and are activated for response through preplanned run cards that each individual agency creates to meet community needs. MABAS will provide station coverage in a community if its fire/EMS resources are involved in a mutual aid incident for an extended period of time.

Northbrook (Ill.) Fire Department Chief Jay Reardon is the current president of MABAS. He also was the former president of the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association and Fire Chief's 2002 Career Fire Chief of the Year.

MABAS recently hosted a conference for the presidents of eight Midwestern states' mutual aid agencies. What was your goal?

We in Illinois have cracked the nut for going across the state line to Wisconsin a number of years ago and to Indiana to a limited degree. Nonetheless, all the states that border Illinois have a want and desire to do mutual aid across state lines on a regular basis. The area in the middle — our niche — is to remove the barriers so that we can provide mutual aid on a daily basis across state lines routinely, not just between Illinois and a state but between all of the states that are involved.

Among the eight state representatives, there was no concern about intrastate mutual aid not happening. There is work to be done developing the contracts and resolving legal issues on a state-to-state basis, which involves worker's compensation, state liability, etc. You're not going to have effective interstate unless you have effective intrastate mutual aid….

What is the key to an effective response, intra- or interstate?

Who's closest, who's capable and who is able to respond. You end up becoming the first response agencies on a mutual aid basis instead of what we saw in [Hurricane] Katrina, where Illinois drove over 1,000 miles. Why should that be and why did that happen? That's what this effort is about. Closest available, closest capable and able, that's what it's all about.

I think the grassroots effort is what will make it happen. The higher-ups need to support our efforts and our initiatives. The higher-ups need not worry about taking control of it because it's going to end up in a much higher bureaucracy where … the motivation from those that want to get it done will be stifled. We don't need to be in competition with the macro issues at a federal level. We need to deal with the issue that is a local issue, with a system created by locals, implemented by locals and maintained by locals. We just need to make sure it integrates well with other systems so we don't have voids when requests are made for assistance. I think the IAFC with their issues for intra- and inter- and our efforts are the platforms to make sure we do it right.

You've repeatedly said that Illinois does not want to be the MABAS police. Where will the authority come from, and how will you keep that from happening?

Probably six years ago there was a concern within the Illinois MABAS organization of enforced compliance. Enforcing compliance implies there is a punitive action if you don't comply. What are you going to do? Tell people they can't have mutual aid? … MABAS, instead of going for punitive actions that would have resulted in lawsuits and cost us a lot of money that we don't have and damaged relationships, looked at systems and methods already in existence that would give us the same end without all the bad side effects.

One is a mediation process with fact finding, where the president can send in three or five chiefs from the outside who aren't biased to investigate complaints about one member against another member and attempt to go through the political process to enforce compliance without going through the courts, without making threats and [implying] lawyers need to get involved.

Second is the philosophy on how we do business. Since I became president, we are a centrally coordinated and facilitated agency, but the compliance and enforcement responsibility is decentralized at the division level. MABAS is made up of divisions; departments are part of divisions. We have 62 divisions and over 1,000 departments in the state of Illinois….

The MABAS executive board's responsibility is to facilitate cooperation, facilitate the removal of barriers that prohibit that cooperation and to get the biggest bang for our buck by sharing resources where it makes sense to share instead of worrying about proprietary ownerships. The rules, the standards, the military minimums that we adopt by procedure or policies are voted on by all members of the executive board meeting, where there are 62 votes on the floor. Each division has a vote.

If adopted, every division then has the responsibility to bring it back and by whatever way that works best locally, to fulfill the requirement or procedure of that policy and comply by local enforcement or whatever creative way they are able to meet the expectation or the spirit of the expectation. That's where the enforcement comes in. I'm not the MABAS police, nor is the executive board [the] police. We're not going to run into town with a hammer or stick to hold over their head. The stick is locally owned, and the carrot is locally owned.

Third, a chief sets up his mutual aid response running cards from the first response to a fifth alarm, and they can go beyond if they want. When a chief drafts those cards and picks fire departments around him or her to be on those cards, it's his decision who he puts on the cards, and it's his decision what strategy he wants to apply and how those cards are set up. It's his call on how he judges the risk when he's putting these different cards together.

Nobody tells a chief how to set up the cards, and it's each chief's responsibility to set up those cards. When you set them up, you send them out to everybody and they have 30 days to review what you are asking for. If they have a problem with what you're asking for or what level of alarm, then they can say, “Chief, I can't meet what you want.” Our whole system is voluntary. If you are unable to respond because you have your own situation, you take a pass and your local dispatch center back-fills that hole automatically.

There's a 30-day comment period on these cards. If you don't send a comment in, then it's assumed it's okay and the chief signs them into effect on a certain day, and that becomes their running cards for extra alarms within the MABAS system. At any time, a chief that's a resource on those cards can send a letter to that chief and say, “I am no longer able to meet your requests. Remove me from the first-level box alarm to the fifth” or “Take me off your card altogether.” It's within the system.

If you have a chief or an agency that refuses to comply with the minimal standards and the expectations of the membership, then any chief or all the chiefs on that card can send a letter and say, “Take me off your cards.” Now if you're the chief who is not complying and people are saying “take me off your cards” because you are not equitably participating, it's an unsafe situation…. If that chief gets those letters, he effectively has no mutual aid because all of the participants are saying, “Count me out.” It's another form of political pressure to get a chief to pay attention.

Have you had to enact any of the mediation efforts?

We've only had one situation a number of years ago that required the mediation to be put in place. It resolved the issue, fixed the problem and cost the fire chief his job. Politically, the local system is what fixed it, and compliance to their own rules was in their best interest. The whole policy board [and] the politicians realized the chief was resisting things like using incident command and firefighter accountability, and it was in their best interests to comply. The chief resisted to the point that they terminated the relationship.

Does [mediation] work? If you look at an organization our size — we're probably around 37,000 firefighters, over 1,000 fire departments — we've only had one mediation. Something's working. That the philosophy is accountable to self first, and then accountable to everyone else is what's making it happen. Centrally coordinated and facilitated, “de-centrally” the enforcement and compliance, and if either side drops the ball, we have mechanisms to fix it.

By using the local systems that are in place, what chiefs would want to embarrass themselves having all their peer chiefs say “take me off your cards”? Why? “Because every time my people go there they get hurt. You don't use incident command, and it's chaotic and stupid; there's no accountability.” Or “when I go to your town I send four people, minimum staffing, and when you come to my town I don't know if I'll get one person or five people. If I send you four, I should expect four back.”

Now if I'm the chief, I would think he could sit down with his elected officials and say, “We're only providing two people for mutual aid when everybody else is agreeing to send four. There's an inequity and here's some options to bring that manpower from two to four.”

The system is designed with systems already in place — local systems, political systems, mediation — so that whenever there is pressure to comply, you can put pressure. That's the de-centralized control to make it happen.

There was a coup in MABAS about seven or eight years ago. The individuals that wanted to turn it into a MABAS police situation were pretty much told by the remainder of the membership [that] we don't want to do business that way. We should be able to comply with our own standards.

To begin a process of top-down enforcement, a.k.a. MABAS police, will probably signal the beginning of the end of our system because all those that get disgruntled and break off and start developing their own little systems, and that's incredibly stupid.

Do you really think you can take this system to interstate, among several states?

Can you take this system and replicate it in another state? Yes, they did it in Wisconsin. They're doing it in Indiana. Can you take it to any state and replicate it? I'm not naïve enough to say yes. There are some states with some big issues and differences of opinion that are substantial and have nothing to do with mutual aid. For them to accept a system based on peer pressure, I think they have a ways to go and issues to resolve before that to happen.

Can state governments take over this system? They do it in California. They buy you a fire truck, you take the fire truck, and you shall participate in mutual aid. Florida: You want to participate? You got it. We'll pay you to participate. MABAS is fully reciprocal without charge. We don't charge neighbors. Our neighboring department has a fire. We respond. When it's all done, there will be thank yous, but no invoices or bills to be done.

How do you figure out the financial side? What if somebody wrecks a truck on the way?

That's covered in the contract under indemnification. If my people go to another town and get hurt or disabled, I am responsible for those costs as if it were to happen here. Whether it's damage to equipment, damage to the fire truck, to the individual, it's a risk of doing business that we all accept. We also accept the fact that none of us have the ability, even the city of Chicago, that we'll never need help from anybody. Everybody will need help from somebody sooner or later.

How do we effectively make it happen so it doesn't become a big brouhaha politically when equipment is broke and people hurt? So it's sufficiently compliant to statutes? I think … the people who created it in 1968 thought of those issues and put together a system based on those premises.

The minute you introduce dollars, you introduce politics. What do politics have to do with putting out a fire? When that building is burning or that hazmat spill is spilling or people are on balconies of an apartment building, politics don't mean a whole lot them. What you need is a system that's going to give you resources to deal with the situation.

When you start charging for mutual aid, the pressure is on the field operators not to call mutual aid because of the cost, and at what point will they have waited too long before they realize they have no other option? Will it be of value or will the loss already have occurred? Will it be measured in property or lives? We can't do that to our field operators, so if I pull an extra alarm, what's that going to cost me? What's a life worth? If it's priceless, why do we want to put a price on charging for it?

MABAS was quickly reimbursed for its costs to Katrina.

That's correct. The reason is that we, MABAS, have signed a memo of agreement with Illinois Emergency Management Agency. Under the IEMA statute, they can sign agreements with entities, public and private, that upon a declaration of disaster, they are willing to assist and become a state resource. When that happens, under the state law, all expenses, liability and immunities are extended to those resources. Technically speaking, even though Northbrook sent a truck down to Katrina, you could have put “State of Illinois” on the side of it because it was a state of Illinois asset. They paid for that asset.

Louisiana asked for that assistance through … state-to-state mutual aid, so Louisiana is actually paying the bill and then Louisiana seeks payment from FEMA.

Conversely, I got a phone call from IEMA. It was a fire in a small city where half of the downtown was burning. The chief was screaming for help, but [the department was] not a MABAS entity. It didn't warrant a disaster, IEMA said. My hands were tied — there was nothing I could do to provide help to that town. If I sent my teams in, I'd be completely on my own because I have no authority to send resources to that community because I have no agreement.

Several departments opted to go out there on their own. It was not an official activation because if somebody gets hurt, there are no protections to fix a vehicle or injured firefighters. You have exceeded your legal authorities. Some departments went and nobody got hurt. A week later, the chief called me, and I sent him the MABAS material and he said they were going to join, but I never heard from him and they are not part of MABAS.

Could a state or a county in Pennsylvania, for example, buy the MABAS book Getting Started and start this program?

Probably. They could probably use it as a template. Their laws in Pennsylvania might be different than our laws here in Illinois. There's no way to get around the attorneys, and we really streamlined the agreement for the way we do business, but everybody has to sign that contract. If a local attorney says he needs to change this word and that word, we say then you can't come in because not a word in that contract can be changed.

How do the MABAS procedures fit with NIMS?

… In the fire service, we're all focusing on NIMS with its relationship with incident command and incident plans, branches and groups and strike forces, strike teams, and that's fine. The way we do business is a change in terminology for some, but the depth of where we're starting to make an impact is on credentialing, resource-typing, coordination of asset systems, integration of systems — our system with other state systems and national systems, our integration with other disciplines.

The terms of “incident command” or “Incident Action Plan” — in my opinion, that's the top layer of what you see, but it's not the real need of NIMS. NIMS is the ability to have interoperability in anything and everything that you do. That's the challenge to MABAS or any other system. How do we make my widget and your widget work together? How do I make my operational mutual aid system work with your operational mutual aid system? Both pretty babies, both different names — who cares? NIMS gives us the common denominators so the systems can work together.

At the meeting of the Mutual Aid Presidents Conference, I said, “I'm not here to sell MABAS; it's a pretty baby. We've all got pretty babies, pick whatever system you want, but our trick and the importance of this meeting is to make sure your system, my system and their system, when they are brought together, work seamlessly.” That's NIMS.

What about police and Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System?

ILEAS is built on the template of MABAS and came to be three years ago. I was president of the Illinois Fire Chiefs and president of MABAS and invited to be on the Illinois Terrorism Task Force representing special operations. Formed in 1998 by the governor, it was made up of all state agencies. The task force realized that the state fire marshal doesn't own fire trucks and firefighters and the Department of Public Health doesn't own paramedics and ambulances and [the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency] doesn't own hazmat teams and hazmat suits, but MABAS did and it was the sole entity that represented operations and had 250 members. While I'm sitting there working through issues, I encouraged others to come to the table….

I noticed with law enforcement that Illinois State Police was at all the meetings, as was the Sheriffs' Association, but there were no local Illinois police chiefs. I called the president of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police and told him he needed to be at that table. One thing the police never had … was a consortium for mutual aid. They had no system like a MABAS — nothing regionally, even between sheriffs. MABAS became their template to create ILEAS. In a similar fashion to MABAS but in a much shorter period of time, it expanded like you wouldn't believe….

Since then, we're working slowly with the building officials in Illinois and looking to establish a template based on the MABAS system. All of the county agencies have formed a system based on the MABAS template. MABAS has become a generic term for mutual aid, and that's cool.…

MABAS is such a unique system, but how much is really personalities? You're the point person right now. How much of this is Jay Reardon?

I think you're right. Personalities play into it and all on the reasonableness side of it, but don't ignore the critical. There are questions that always come up that need to be answered, but we try to answer them in a way that it complements the existing system and won't cripple the system.

Let's say you go in to buy a car. Aren't you more likely to buy a car from somebody who is willing to talk to you; answer questions and look at you eye to eye; and if they don't know, they'll get back to you with an answer? I think that anybody that is asked to represent MABAS attempts the same manner. We are a solid organization, and prior to Sept. 11, MABAS started to become recognized in the state of Illinois. In 1998, we had 250-plus members and we exploded all the way through, but right after 9/11 we saw big growth. We signed an agreement with IEMA a year before 9/11/01, and that allowed us to respond anywhere in Illinois whether they were or were not a MABAS entity….

If somebody questions why they should join if they'll get MABAS anyway, we'd ask, “What about all those other disasters that don't make it to the state disaster level?”

I have stopped worrying about trying to sell this product. If somebody is unable to see the advantages for their community, then it fits in the cliché “ignorance can be fixed, stupid is broken,” and I don't deal with broken things. When we hear from a rural county that they have 15 departments in the county — seven want in, but the rest don't — we tell them to come in and that county will be one with seven in and eight not. What do we do to get the others to join us? Give them time. MABAS sells itself. When all of the fears and premonitions don't happen, nobody steals their fire trucks or nozzles, the stories come back of how good MABAS is, then one by one they come into the MABAS division.