Mayday Management Workshop
Are Your Incident Commanders and Firefighters Prepared to Manage a Mayday?
"MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY" can be the most life and career-altering phrase in the fire service. It means firefighters are in trouble and cannot exit the hazard zone under their own power and require assistance.
There are huge responsibilities that simply come with being an incident commander. None of those responsibilities are more important than the ability to effectively manage an incident that has firefighters in mayday circumstances.
The incident commander has a specific role in both the prevention and response to mayday situations. The most critical responsibility in preventing maydays is ensuring firefighters are not working in offensive positions during defensive fire conditions. The most critical responsibility during mayday response operations is the ability to utilize the command system to both respond and support the mayday actions, as well as manage the fire control operations to attempt to restore stability to the incident.
Consider the following:
- Less than 5% of Officers (incident commanders, Chief Officer, Company Officers) involved in Mayday had participated in Mayday Management training prior to the event
- 37% of Mayday radio transmissions are missed by the incident commander on the first attempt
"You must be doing everything right before something goes wrong" ~ Alan Brunacini
The Blue Card Incident Command System will address the why and how of mayday management in a 2-day workshop. We will discuss what doing everything right before the mayday looks like to improve our capability to prevent maydays and utilize the same system to respond to the mayday.
The areas of discussion will include:
- The Southwest Supermarket Fire and the Line of Duty Death of Bret Tarver Recovery Process as the foundation of mayday response, and what the reality needs to be
- Discuss the comprehensive data surrounding nearly 13,000 maydays compiled between 2015 and 2021 in Project Mayday
- Standard incident organization to best manage the work and the safety of the workers
- Real world mayday management utilizing the Blue Card Incident Command System