ACCOUNTABILITY – Guest Post by Eric Thompson, Chief, Red Oak Fire Department

Firefighter safety and survival is one of the hottest topics in our service today. There are hundreds of different topics that may be discussed on those two words alone. As Fire Service Leaders we should always place the safety and well being of our members first and foremost over any other item on our agendas.   It is our responsibility to ensure our organizations have strong leadership principles, and have identified a set of core values that are being practiced not just a page in our annual reports or on the wall in the training rooms.  In order for our departments to create a safety oriented culture, we must develop our members with these principles from day one and provide our tenured personnel with ongoing career development programs. 

This month, I would like to touch on the importance of accountability.  There are actually a few different areas we could discuss in regards to accountability.  First is holding ourselves and our peers accountable to do the right thing, and have the self discipline the follow our adopted policies and procedures and not tolerate our peers to stray away.  This reverts back to establishing a culture within our department.  It takes years sometimes to develop a true culture and not just a common industry practice we try to abide by most of the time. Once the culture is established and maintains a focus on firefighter safety and well being of our members; then the most challenging task has been completed. 

On a different view of accountability, we can discuss the significance it plays in incident management. In order to maintain any type safety on our incidents we must keep ourselves organized and structured. Personnel accountability is a big part of being organized.  An incident commander must have the ability to account for all personnel at an incident scene at all times.  This should be maintained throughout the entire incident.

“Accountability involves a personal commitment to work within the safety system at an incident. Command should always maintain an accurate tracking and awareness of where resources are committed at an incident. Command will always be responsible for including accountability as a major element in strategy and attack planning, and must consider and react to any barriers for effective accountability. During greater alarm incidents where the span of control exceeds the capabilities of the incident commander (IC), the IC shall expand the division of labor and establish different division officers.  Division officers shall always maintain an accurate tracking and awareness of crews assigned to them.  All crews will be accountable to Command or to a division — free-lancing should never be accepted. Crews arriving on the scene shall remain intact for all operations. All crew members will go in together, stay together, and come out together.  Reduced visibility and increased risk will require diligence to stay together. This is considered company integrity and is a practice that is highly recommended.  A minimum crew size is two or more members; a portable radio should always be required of each crew member. If a radio fails while in the hazard/hot-zone, the crew should exit unless there is another working radio with the crew.”  (Red Oak Fire Rescue, SOP 1000, Command Procedures, Accountability Overview, Pg 22.)

As you can see, accountability has a significant role in the well being and safety of our members. Accountability starts within with self discipline, and carries out to the incident scene as a vital practice for tracking resources. I can only hope that our leadership in our departments throughout our state will keep accountability in both aspects a priority and build this into our culture, so EVERYONE GOES HOME.