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….