I know that this is not Rapid Intervention, but at the same time it is related to rescuing the rescuers. Next to training, a good accountability system is the most important tool in preventing the need for a Rapid Intervention Team activation. If you hava a true accountability system in place at an incident, it can prevent unauthorized actions from taking place and having things go bad quickly. The thing is, most departments have a marginal system, or a system that they do not use at all. I have had a hard time trying to explain to my Station Chiefs just what true accountability is. Most of them think it means knowing who is on scene. I could not get them to understand that for you to have true accountability, you not only have to know who is on scene, but exactly where they are operating, and what tasks they have been assigned. My Department is a combination style system. We have 16 county stations with both paid and volunteer personnel. We also have contracts with the three municipal fire departments that are located in our county. We have a little over 400 responders in our agency. I have tasked myself with developing a County-wide accountability system. Here is what I have came up with . We will use a passport style system. All of our stations are numbered 1-21 (including municipalities, Haz-Mat, and Special Rescue). I will assign team numbers that start with the station number and then the team numbers 1-9. These team number would work out like this Station #1 would have team numbers 11-19, Station #2 would have team numbers 21-29, and so on ending up with Station #21 having team numbers 211-219. These team decals would be made of Reflexite material, and be worn on the back right side of each members helmet. This would do two things. From a distance one would be able to see the decal and know to which station that member belonged, and what team they were on. All odd numbered teams would consist of either 3 or 5 members, and even numbered teams would consist of either 2,4, or 6 members. Each member would be issued name tags (4) each. These name tags would be color coded to the training level of each individual. This would allow staging to build teams that were balanced. The member approaches their respective engine and removes two name tags. The member would place one name tag in the place where he or she removed their team decal. The other name tag would be placed on the passport card that also has the team number engraved on it. The staging officer would check the teams for balance, before sending the team with the passport to the operations officer for assignment. The operations operations officer then places the passport on the ops board and grease pencils the assignment next to the passport. This is true accountability. I want to know what you think. Any ideas and/or comments are welcomed.