Commission pushes training and standardization for incident accountability boards and ID tags

The Oconee County Fire Service Advisory Commission discussed using recently delivered incident accountability boards and ID tags to improve tracking of personnel at emergency scenes and recommended joint training and standard practices across departments.

Commission members said the physical boards are now in the system and chiefs have begun distributing them to departments. A staff member said the boards will be useful only if departments adopt consistent procedures and recommended training sessions led by county staff (Honeycutt was named as a point of contact in the discussion) so departments can develop a shared, flexible approach rather than a rigid, written protocol.

Members also discussed individualized crew numbering and ID cards (for example, Oconee fire numbers for apparatus and numeric IDs for firefighters) and the advantages of using short numeric identifiers on the accountability board rather than full names that may be difficult to spell under stress. “I like, you know, instead of trying to keep up with super scratch or fragilistic x b l. Does because I don't know how to spell that. You know what I'm saying?” a commission member said, urging numeric ID use for clarity.

The commission suggested producing ID tags and cards tied to current physical dates (so cards do not expire days after issuance) and encouraged departments to fill out ID sheets and return them to the designated coordinator (Hollifield was cited as coordinating for fire tags). Staff and chiefs agreed to set up training sessions and to encourage departments to identify scribes or accountability personnel at larger incidents to maintain the board when personnel move on scene.