Mutual Aid Box Alarm System

The Mutual Aid Box Alarm System or MABAS for short, was formed in 1968 in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. A Captain from the Elk Grove Village Fire Department proposed the system and managed is implementation. Structured on Chicago box alarm cards that pre-assign apparatus to respond on a given level of alarm, MABAS adopted this simple model and still uses it today.

Member departments of MABAS were organized into divisions in the early 1970s. These divisions usually consist of 12 to 20 departments.