Without question, the most pressing challenge facing fire/rescue service leaders today is to achieve accurate and complete personnel accountability. In recent years, the introduction of Personal Alert Safety System (PASS) devices certainly brought great promise to the arena of personnel accountability.

    Unfortunately, most early and many current devices in use today were cumbersome and were plagued by false alerts. Many of these devices incorporated a constant audible 'chirp' feature to signify active status. One problem found to be universally present was that the majority of fire/rescue personnel did not activate their PASS device because of this audible signal and the nuisance it created.

    Quite obviously, a non-activated PASS device was of absolutely no value to the incident manager. Most importantly, a non-activated PASS device did nothing for a firefighter who is in a distress situation. If a fire/rescue worker suddenly becomes incapacitated, a non-activated device will not go into the alert mode.

    Consider the following components of a typical departmental accountability system:

A mechanical census must be undertaken to identify those present on the emergency scene. This effort includes items such as:


• 1. individual or unit identity tags
  
• 2. collector rings or other mechanisms to divide the incident into crews
  
• 3. manually operated personnel status boards of electronic bar-code scanning to sort personnel and crews to complete the census
  
• 4. a 'runner' system to bring these components to the Command Post
  

    A PASS device is the key element depended upon to provide warning, or alert, that a fire/rescue worker is in distress. These rely solely on audible alarms to provide this notification.

    The degree of difficulty in managing these components expands exponentially with the size of the incident. Multiple alarm incidents can easily overtax the resources assigned to account for operational personnel.

    Inexplicably, many fire/rescue workers have been killed or seriously injured on smaller, routine house fires, and in some cases they were not located for several hours. When they were found, it was discovered that their PASS device was not activated.

    If all functions are properly performed in a timely fashion, all goes well. With these systems it is absolutely essential that every element functions as intended. When one or more of these components is not performed, the system fails and there is no true personnel accountability. Sadly, this often leads to tragedy. Needless injuries and loss of life can be prevented. Contact Grace Industries, Inc. to learn more obout our Solutions For Life Safety.