Patent ID: 8305196

Claim:
A method for accounting for responders from a plurality of public safety agencies, including at least a firefighting agency and one other public safety agency, at a site, comprising: clearing an active responder database associated with the site; obtaining a first RFID from a portable responder radio that has been scanned by a mobile RFID reader when arriving in a vicinity of the site, the portable responder radio associated to one of the plurality of public safety agencies; determining, by using the first RFID, a responder identity from a RFID database that associates each one of a plurality of responder identities to a corresponding responder radio RFID; automatically adding at least one of the responder identity and the first RFID to the active responder database for the site; initiating an acknowledgement to the portable responder radio that indicates that the responder identity has been added to the active responder database; obtaining a third RFID before obtaining a second RFID, wherein the third RFID was obtained from an RFID scanning of a responder radio that was performed in a vicinity of a sub-site location; and associating the sub-site location with the responder identity when the third RFID matches the first RFID; sending a command from a base station radio to the responder radio that automatically channel steers the radio to a channel that is associated with the sub-site location when the third RFID matches the first RFID; obtaining the second RFID from the portable responder radio that has been scanned when leaving in the vicinity of the site; and automatically removing the at least one of the responder identity and the first RFID from the active responder database when the second RFID matches the first RFID.