Mutual Aid Question

[Firemanz84]

I have a question regarding Mutual Aid...

We are a First Response Fire/Rescue company that relies on another fire department for patient transport.

The Mutual Aid section asks about the number of calls that we recieved mutual aid and number of calls we supply mutual aid...

Do we count the ambulance response from the other FD as recieving M/A? If we do count them, our receiving mutual aid number increases by that many.

What are they looking for? Does it look negatively on us that we need M/A all the time or is it a positive that we need help and our interoperability is intact....

thanks in advance

[jam24u]

I have a question regarding Mutual Aid...

We are a First Response Fire/Rescue company that relies on another fire department for patient transport.

The Mutual Aid section asks about the number of calls that we recieved mutual aid and number of calls we supply mutual aid...

Do we count the ambulance response from the other FD as recieving M/A? If we do count them, our receiving mutual aid number increases by that many.

What are they looking for? Does it look negatively on us that we need M/A all the time or is it a positive that we need help and our interoperability is intact....

thanks in advance

I would list it as it is. Count it as the number of times you received mutual aid. Inside the narrative refer to it as automatic aid. I heard they like the move towards automatic aid agreements between mutual aid partners. For us, these line of jurisdiction jealousies are frowned upon.

[BC79er_OLDDELETE]

If they are in your district they count as your EMS calls either BLS or ALS. Mutual aid refers to calling someone that provides the same services. Since you don't transport you are not calling for mutual aid when you make an EMS run, it's a joint response.

Different from calling someone's aerial if you don't have one, that's still calling for M/A and counting as your structure. If you have an aerial and run on a first alarm to someone else's fire, it's only mutual aid not a structure fire also.

[rm1524]

When we go on a medical call it is logged in to our reporting program as 'assist ems'. When we go to another dept on 1st alarm and we have a auto-aid agreement it is entered as 'auto-aid given', we are requested after the 1st alarm is given it is then 'mutual-aid given'. The same is true when other depts come to our district 'auto-aid recieved or mutual-aid recieved'.

Hope this helps.

[Firemanz84]

Thanks everyone! That is how we have handled it in our past applications (50% success rate)but the question came up this year.

Thanks again and good luck to all...