Firefighter Mayday, radio traffic and accountability

Resuming routine traffic is announced when the priority situation is over, not with this term.

A transfer of command is announced by name and position; it is not a priority warning.

"Emergency traffic" warns all units that an urgent safety message, such as an evacuation order, is about to be sent.

A lost or trapped member calls a Mayday, which is a different and higher-priority call.

Asking for a repeat is the only way to be sure what was actually sent.

A garbled message may be important; there is no way to judge it without hearing it clearly.

Another crew may have misheard too, and side conversations add radio traffic.

Guessing can put a crew in the wrong place or have them do the wrong task.

These describe the crew and its equipment rather than reporting conditions and progress.

CAN gives command a short, complete update: what the crew sees, what it is doing, and what it requires.

These are pieces of a unit's identification, not the content of a progress report.

Air status is a near-miss swapped in for actions; the progress report is about the work, not the crew's air.

SCBA records are kept by the maintenance program, not by tags collected at an entry point.

Payroll has its own records; accountability tags exist for safety on scene.

Apparatus placement is a command and staging decision, not the purpose of personnel tags.

Collected passports or tags show command which members are inside and where, so a missing member is noticed quickly.

The address side is A, the starting point of the lettering.

Sides are lettered clockwise from the address side: A is the front, B the left, C the rear and D the right.

The right side as seen from the front is D, the last letter around the building.

The left side as seen from the front is B, the next letter clockwise from A.

A phone call to dispatch is slower than going straight to command, which controls the scene.

Entering alone is freelancing and risks creating a second firefighter in trouble.

Fire that is cutting off an exit does not leave time to wait and see.

Command can warn the crew by other means or send help, so the danger is reported right away.

The telecommunicator dispatches units and tracks their status in support of the incident.

Evacuation orders come from the incident commander; dispatch only relays them.

Selecting an offensive or defensive strategy is the incident commander's decision on scene; dispatch does not make it.

Giving crews tactical assignments is a command decision made on scene.

The Federal Communications Commission licenses radio frequencies and enforces on-air rules such as the ban on obscene language.

OSHA regulates workplace safety and has no role in radio licensing.

NFPA writes consensus standards; it has no power to license frequencies or police the airwaves.

FEMA runs national emergency management programs such as NIMS, not radio licensing.

The channel selector picks the frequency; static on that frequency is still heard.

Squelch mutes the receiver until a strong enough signal arrives, so the radio is quiet between messages.

Scan steps through several channels in turn and does nothing about static on any of them.

Volume makes everything louder or softer, static included; it does not mute the gaps.

The same code can mean different things in different departments, so mutual-aid units can misunderstand it; plain language avoids that.

No federal rule bans codes; the move to plain language comes from incident management guidance.

Fire and EMS agencies have used their own codes too; no discipline owns them.

Codes are short, which is why they caught on; speed is not the problem with them.

The lens does not carry sound well; the mic belongs at the voice port.

Shouting distorts the transmitted voice and makes the message harder to understand.

Breaking the facepiece seal exposes the airway to smoke and toxic gases.

Held close to the facepiece's voice port or amplifier, the mic picks up a normal speaking voice clearly.

Routine traffic is held during a Mayday; it can wait until command clears the channel.

Extra calls to the crew compete with command's own exchange with them and waste their air and attention.

Radio silence except for essential traffic keeps the air open for the trapped firefighter and the rescue.

Repeating a call that command is already handling only fills the channel the firefighter needs.

Arrival times are ordinary operational traffic that dispatch and command rely on.

Calling for more resources is routine operational traffic that has to be heard.

A name ties medical information to a person for anyone listening on a scanner, so it is kept off open channels.

Units need the address to respond; it is routine traffic, not private information.

The riding list shows who started the shift on the rig, not who is with the officer now.

A PAR is a physical check: the officer confirms each member by sight, voice or touch before reporting the crew intact.

Dispatch knows who was sent, not whether each member is accounted for on scene.

Tags at a board show who was assigned in, not who is present and safe at this moment.

The response plan, often kept as run cards or in CAD, lists which units go to each type of call in each area.

The station log records events at the station, not the units sent to calls.

A preincident plan describes one building's features and hazards, not the general list of units for a call type.

A communications plan assigns radio channels and talk groups at an incident.

Low volume uses slightly less power, so it would extend battery life, not shorten it.

Cold cuts the usable capacity of radio batteries, so spares are kept warm and swapped sooner in winter.

Talk-around changes how the signal travels, not how fast the battery drains.

A remote lapel mic changes where the firefighter speaks, not how fast the battery drains.

A report of trapped occupants is acted on as reported; confirmation comes on scene.

Waiting for command costs minutes the occupants may not have and leaves the first officer planning without it.

Crews en route may not see a CAD note in time; critical updates are spoken on the air.

Information that changes the response, such as trapped occupants, goes to the responding units immediately.

A bare acknowledgment shows the message arrived but not that it was understood correctly.

Repeating the order back closes the loop and shows command exactly what the officer heard.

Without a reply, command cannot tell whether the order was received at all.

Written orders are not practical on the fireground; radio orders are confirmed by voice.