Post by papacheese on Jun 12, 2008 5:33:59 GMT -5
In case you missed it, the Division of Fire Safety issued the following regulation changes effective 6/3/08 (I'm going to summarize):
1) Mandating the use of a Safety Officer for "significant events" if the IC cannot handle the assignment themselves.
2) RIT is now RIC (in conformance with NFPA standards).
3) We can officially use the word "Mayday" when calling for help (unless there are marine or aviation units participating).
4) The evac signal has been clarified to a series of short air horn blasts for ten seconds followed by ten seconds of silence, with this sequence repeated up to fifty seconds.
Reading the comments pages, the largest number addressed the use of Mayday instead of the proposed "emergency radio traffic", a mouthful to spit out. Thankfully, the universally accepted, taught, and practiced one was chosen, making things a hellva lot simpler. I truely beleive that a trapped firefighter won't take the time to remember whether there's a marine or aviation unit assigned to the incident when making the call.
As far as the RIT/RIC thing goes, my personal opinion is that the term we use isn't as important as the concept...whatever you call it, we have to learn and practice it.
1) Mandating the use of a Safety Officer for "significant events" if the IC cannot handle the assignment themselves.
2) RIT is now RIC (in conformance with NFPA standards).
3) We can officially use the word "Mayday" when calling for help (unless there are marine or aviation units participating).
4) The evac signal has been clarified to a series of short air horn blasts for ten seconds followed by ten seconds of silence, with this sequence repeated up to fifty seconds.
Reading the comments pages, the largest number addressed the use of Mayday instead of the proposed "emergency radio traffic", a mouthful to spit out. Thankfully, the universally accepted, taught, and practiced one was chosen, making things a hellva lot simpler. I truely beleive that a trapped firefighter won't take the time to remember whether there's a marine or aviation unit assigned to the incident when making the call.
As far as the RIT/RIC thing goes, my personal opinion is that the term we use isn't as important as the concept...whatever you call it, we have to learn and practice it.
