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Homewood board approves MABAS expansion and ambulance donation 

The Homewood Village Board approved the expansion of the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS) 24 master agreement on Jan. 14. 

MABAS has been around in Illinois since 1970 to allow mutual aid between villages when necessary for emergencies. The approval of this agreement will allow the villages of Matteson, Richton Park, and Park Forest to be added to MABAS 24, said Fire Chief Bob Grabowski. 

The box alarm is what fire departments use and rely on to signal the location of a fire and level of emergency. For box alarms that signal minor emergencies, only Homewood would respond. If the emergency is more serious, then Homewood would activate a higher box alarm. This would allow additional resources from other nearby villages to assist with the emergency, he said. 

According to Grabowski, the current MABAS agreement includes 20 villages: Burnham, Calumet City, Country Club Hills, Dolton, East Hazel Crest, Flossmoor, Glenwood, Harvey, Hazel Crest, Homewood, Lansing, Lynwood, Markham, Munster, Oak Forest, Phoenix, Riverdale, South Holland, Thornton, and Tinley Park. 

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Park Forest, Matteson, and Richton Park left MABAS 27 earlier this year so that they could join MABAS 24. This will allow the departments to share training sessions. It will also be beneficial in terms of merging the partnerships between SouthCom (the company that the departments of Park Forest, Matteson, and Richton Park are affiliated with) and E-COM, said Grabowski. 

The village also granted approval of an ordinance for the donation of a 2003 Ford backup ambulance to Hazel Crest on Tuesday. 

According to Grabowski, as of 1989, the villages of Homewood, Flossmoor, and Hazel Crest had an agreement to share an ambulance. Ultimately, the fire chiefs from all three villages each decided to buy their own front-line ambulance instead, making the shared ambulance a backup. 

Both Homewood and Flossmoor were able to purchase new ambulances since then. Hazel Crest has expressed how beneficial the donation of the reserved ambulance would be for its village until it is ready to purchase a new one, he said. 

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