Who's in the building? It's a simple question but one that far too many incident commanders find themselves unable to answer.

The issue of fireground accountability remains critical for the fire service, particularly for command officers who are tasked with securing the safety and survival of the firefighters under their command.

The two primary goals of any incident commander at a fire are always the same: to play a positive role in solving the customer's problem and to bring all firefighters home safely. If command officers are committed to bringing their firefighters home safe, they must do whatever is necessary to be able to answer that question by defining the term “functional fireground accountability” and providing command officers with the information necessary to keep accountability at the forefront of their decision-making.

Limited effectiveness

Fireground systems never magically function by themselves. Tags don't walk themselves from one part of the tactical board to another as a firefighter moves about on the incident scene. If a firefighter hangs his or her tag in the apparatus before dismounting to attack a fire, it will remain safely on that apparatus throughout the incident. The cost of the system does not translate into effectiveness either; neither a cow tag clipped to a D-ring nor a multi-faceted, integrated, connected, electronic tone-sounding, temperature-taking tool will tell the incident commander who is in the building at any given moment.

An accountability system is like a halligan bar waiting to be picked up and used; in the hands of a trained, experienced, knowledgeable firefighter it's a powerful tool, but it will not force a door by itself. Command officers must commit someone to managing the accountability function, ideally an officer or fireground aide who is extremely knowledgeable in the functional parts of the system. Absent this, an accountability system is nothing more than a boat anchor.

So who is in the best position to manage accountability? In many fire service jurisdictions the incident commander is tasked with this, and to a certain extent it makes sense because tactical assignments and resource allocation flow through the command post. As command officers issue orders to personnel and then replace them periodically when fresh crews arrive, it seems logical that the incident commander should be able to incorporate an accountability system into the incident status system — and in a small fire that is rapidly controlled with limited tactical demands, this is true. Most ICs will tell you that they have a fairly good ability to track the resources of a single-alarm assignment by memory.

The deadly flaw in this system reveals itself in a rapidly expanding multiple-alarm incident when the demands of command outstrip an IC's ability to keep pace with the demands of resource tracking. When a command officer is faced with the competing responsibilities of managing a fire and managing an accountability system, the fire wins every time. Overloading the incident commander with conflicting responsibilities sets him or her up for failure regardless of the level of experience and quality of command present.

An IC should not be responsible for managing an accountability system; rather it should be viewed as any other tactical priority, and the IC should assign resources to manage it. If insufficient resources are on-scene, he or she should call for more help until sufficient resources are on location to ensure the safety of personnel. For an incident commander to be able to answer who is in the building, he or she must first recognize the need to separate incident management from resource management and assign a person to run the accountability system in a location remote from the command post.

Accountability vs. resources

The next issue is the often-misunderstood difference between fireground accountability and resource status. RESTAT is a component of logistics in which an incident commander is made aware of the status of resources (personnel and apparatus) on scene or en route and in various states of availability for deployment. This is a logistical issue, not an accountability issue. Firefighters don't generally die in staging. This is not meant to be flippant; in fact it's extremely important. There may be a dramatic difference between the number of firefighters on the scene of a fire and the number of firefighters operating in the hot zone. If the accountability system is to be functional, it must limit the number of firefighters to be tracked to the specific number of individuals in the building. By limiting the accountability function to this group, it is a significantly more manageable situation.

Too frequently, accountability tags are deposited at a collection point and aren't retrieved until the end of a fire when crews are leaving the fireground. An accountability officer should not have to fumble through 50 tags to identify the eight or 10 individuals who are actually operating in the building. Nor should he or she have to run around the fireground collecting tags from apparatus after the IC asks who's in the building. A functional accountability system limits the resources being tracked, from a firefighter safety perspective, to those individuals operating in the hot zone in an offensive position in a burning structure. All other issues associated with “accounting” for personnel should be managed as a logistical function.

Tools of the save

For an accountability officer to be effective, he or she must possess certain tools. First and most importantly, there must be buy-in at all levels of the department to participate in the system and play by a basic set of rules. This is a cultural issue that needs to be fostered and promoted every day in every aspect of departmental operations. It's also a basic training issue; once officers or crews have been trained, they must be held accountable for their actions. Individuals don't have the right to decide whether an accountability system needs to be employed. That is a decision made at the highest level of the organization and ultimately rests with the chief. Command officers must be willing to demand compliance when appropriate.

The next issue is hardware. An accountability system is functional when it is simple; multiple tags and multiple check-in points create opportunities for confusion and could lead to a condition where participants who perceive that the system is too cumbersome to be effective won't use it. A single-tag system that emphasizes functionality will be infinitely more effective. When a firefighter is in the hot zone, his or her tag should be located with the accountability officer at the accountability point of control. It should be retrieved by the firefighter immediately upon exiting the hot zone and should remain with that firefighter until he or she is re-assigned to the hot zone of operations (offensive mode in the building involved in fire) or dismissed from the scene.

The final component of a functional accountability system is one that permits the accountability officer to rapidly account for the crews operating in the hot zone. The best example is a personnel accountability report. A PAR permits an incident commander or accountability officer to rapidly account for resources committed in offensive positions through a verbal checks-and-balance system. Crews operating in the hot zone should be contacted periodically (but not more than every 20 minutes) and their location and number of personnel verified. This no-cost mechanism designed to improve situational awareness is an extremely effective way to ensure the safety of personnel.

Another safety net would be to consider requiring a second-arriving command officer or safety officer to challenge and confirm the actions of the IC. In other words, require a subsequent arriving command officer to ask: Who is in the building, where are they, and why are they there? Although not traditionally found in the paramilitary structure of a fire command post, the concept of error avoidance through challenge and confirm methods is not new. It can reflect a significant departure from past practice, but the benefits of trapping an error before it becomes a catastrophic event resulting in the death of a firefighter far outweighs the cost of changing a culture. Again, the implementation cost of such a program is zero.

History repeating

Fire service history is replete with examples of firefighter deaths where individuals remained unaccounted for for long periods of time. On Feb. 14, 1995, Pittsburgh Firefighters Tom Brooks, Mark Kolenda, and Patty Conroy lost their lives after they were missing for more than 70 minutes without an accountability check. Such deaths could have been avoided if a PAR program had been in place, or if any later-arriving officer had asked the IC if Engine 17 had been heard from. Tragically, firefighters in this country will continue to die in much the same fashion because of command officer's unwillingness to embrace proven life-safety initiatives. It disgraces the memory of those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice to repeat the mistakes that cost them their lives.

Functional fireground accountability is everyone's responsibility. Ultimately, the value of an accountability system is based on its ability to track the movement of firefighters into and out of the hot zone. Firefighters must participate in the program and the program must be simple, easy to use, adaptable and, most importantly, staffed. A system is only as effective as the personnel assigned to control and manage it. Without people, an accountability system is as useless as the halligan bar in a compartment or an air pack in a seat. Command officers who are committed to bringing their firefighters home alive must be able to answer the question: Who is in the building?

---

Matthew Tobia is a captain in the Anne Arundel County (Md.) Fire Department and a 16-year emergency services veteran. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland and is a nationally certified Fire Officer. Tobia is an adjunct instructor at the Pennsylvania Fire Academy, where he has participated in the development of curricula related to firefighter survival and RIT operations. He has lectured nationally on mayday procedures and is active with the National Fallen Fire Fighters Foundation and the Mid-Atlantic Burn Camp. He can be reached at fdtobia@aacounty.org.