When and How to Report a Mayday

A thought occurred to me the other day. We in the fire service know that there is a definite problem in getting members to report when they are in trouble and when to mayday.

This may seem like a pretty simple concept but I am not sure we have spent any of our training hours speaking about it.

Let's look at some of the terminology that is out there and present this in any way that meets your department's current standard operating procedures.

Urgent vs. Mayday

We suggest that there be two terms used on the radio and they have slightly different meanings. The term urgent should be used when there is a potential for a life threatening problem to occur and you need the incident commander's immediate attention. Potential safety hazard, loss of water, apparatus unable to respond and those sorts of priority messages. We suggest that the term Urgent be repeated twice before the radio message is given. We also suggest that you use the 'LIP" acronym for both of these.

LIP Acronym

The acronym is important and at the same time problematic because in many cases it is different from the way we normally speak on the radio. We suggest that you give the information specifically in this order:

Location - Where you are or where the problem is.

Identification - What unit, division or group, you are designated as.

Problem - What is the exact nature or the urgent or mayday.

This makes a radio message look like this:

URGENT, URGENT, rear of the building, engine 2, possible wall collapse and failure.

Using this format we have the incident commander's immediate attention and we know where the problem is. If the radio failed or there was a problem, who you are really is not as important as where you are. Immediately we are focused on the rear of the building in this case. This becomes really important in a mayday and the dispatch of a RIT.

Mayday

We should identify for a firefighter when they should call a mayday. We should also at the same time tell the firefighter and insure that they continue any and all methods of self survival they have. Calling a mayday should no longer be the last thing you do in a chain of events but the first to get help on the way early while you continue to take steps to save your own life. We have consistently trained firefighters to take all the self survival steps first then call a mayday. We need to rethink and change that right now.

Mayday should be used only in the situation that is an immediate life threatening condition to a firefighter. For a civilian use URGENT.

When we call a mayday we should say the word mayday three times so that we insure it is heard. We should then follow the LIP protocol as stated above.

We should instruct our firefighters to call a mayday in the following circumstances:

When they are entangled in any way.

When they have lost their water supply at the point of attack.

When they have fire behind them and have no obvious means of egress.

When they are having an SCBA emergency.

When they are separated and have no clear point of reference or location such as a hoseline or a wall.

When they feel they are in an immediate life threatening condition. What their gut tells them

The radio message should look like this.

MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY, second floor, engine 2, on low air and lost.

Make sure companies manually sound PASS devices also.

We can now send a RIT to that area with spare SCBA and know that we are looking for an entire crew.

Will this training session encourage a few more maydays that may turn out to be premature or false? Yes I think it will. Who cares! If this saves the life of one firefighter and the call was made early enough to allow a RIT to respond then I will be more than pleased.

If your firefighters are afraid to call a mayday because they may get picked on later for it, then be sure to let them know they are members of the fire service, they will be picked on anyway for something else! :-)

Better to be picked on at the kitchen table then to have everyone the day of the funeral saying why didn't he mayday?