The Illinois Department of Labor’s (IDOL) Division of Occupational Safety and Health (IL OSHA), in collaboration with the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal (OSFM), Illinois Fire Service Institute (IFSI), Illinois Fire Chiefs Association (IFCA) and Mutual Aid Box Alarm System-Illinois (MABAS-Illinois) have developed a sample incident command, accountability, and mayday standard operating guideline (SOG) for structure fires.
While IL OSHA requires fire departments that perform interior firefighting to have an incident command, accountability, and mayday policy, IL OSHA does not require use of this specific SOG.
The sample SOG was developed using the following goals:
- To provide a basic SOG (it is three pages) that fire departments without an incident command, accountability, and mayday SOG can easily adopt and implement.
- To provide an SOG that could be adopted verbatim, adopted with modifications, or used as a tool to compare a department’s current SOG to the sample SOG.
- To strike the balance between firefighter safety and operational effectiveness.
- To combat the “NIOSH 5” fatal factors of firefighter deaths and injuries on the fireground.
The sample SOG is available at osha.illinois.gov/fire.
Occupational safety and health standards enforcement for employers in Illinois is a shared responsibility between the U.S. Department of Labor (federal OSHA) and the Illinois Department of Labor (IL OSHA). Federal OSHA, an Administration under the U.S. Department of Labor, covers all private sector workplaces while IL OSHA, a Division of the Illinois Department of Labor, covers all state and local government workplaces.