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To start this year off the Lake County MABAS Division 4 has adopted a New Rehab Policy. This policy was adopted August 26, 2009 by action of the Lake County Fire Chiefs Association. It is by design to update an action of 2005. It was taken from NFPA 1584, 2008 and the USFA Emergency Incident Rehabilitation of February 2008.

After a review of this policy, It has been determined that MESS SOP is close to the procedure described in the new policy. The new policy has recommend 32 pieces of equipment be available at the incident.  13 pieces of recommended equipment is not carried on each vehicle by but available to MESS on request.

The change in policy is mostly to bring the medical operation to the rehab sector. In an effort to accommodate this, our policy will be adapted to add to the flow. The hard part of these changes will show the training of the rehab group supervisor is not adequate to cover all incidents. Also the procedure tries to cover operations not normally covered by the fire departments, and in some cases the fire departments are called in as part of the operation but as support.

In the case of a police action involving a barricaded and armed subject with a possible hostage. Involves procedures the rehab group supervisor is not accustomed to. MESS has responded to the above and operations with the field forces at civil disturbances and presidential acceptance speeches. In addition MESS has interacted with operation that is not every day experiences to the average fire department. We have interacted on operation at several rail accidents, airplane crashes, and flood operations, overturned and leaking Gasoline tanker trucks, Hazmat, water rescue, water recovery, wild fire operations, Toronto staging support operations, search or rescue incidents, and large incidents involving several MESS units for support in training and national training evaluation incidences.

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