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Hopkins Co. firefighters using new incident system

By Cory Stark - bio | email | Twitter
Posted by Noah Stubbs - email

HOPKINS CO., KY (WFIE) - For years, many Hopkins County fire departments have used their own accountability program, but now for the first time, all 15 departments in the county will use what is called the personnel accountability system.

"This is actually something that we have been working on, talking amongst ourselves for 15, 18 years," Richland Fire Chief Wade Simmons said. "That we needed a better accountability system."

Each department will receive an identical command board that will be deployed with the truck to a scene of a fire or other emergency.

Every fire fighter in the county will also have tags that list critical information.

"Our main goal is to make sure that every fire fighter is accounted for and is safe at all times," Chris Cothran said. "So it's important that we all use the same equipment and tracking information."

"If I called in another fire department and they sent me 20 people," Chief Simmons said. "I can go through and look at those tags really quick and can go through and pick out the EMT's just by the way the tags are marked."

The system is designed to keep an emergency scene organized.

"If these particular fire fighters arrive on scene, and I assign them to an interior job," Cothran said. "I click their tag here and write interior here."

The new command boards also have an incident checklist.

"They can just go trough and check it off, as they assign them or complete them, and they know they're done," Simmons said.

Classes to train fire fighters on the system will be held Thursday and Saturday morning.

Officials say it will be several weeks until every department is using the new system.

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