What is the Incident Command System (ICS)?
In 2003, I knew that ICS was a broad approach for managing crisis/emergency situations. In February 2005, as part of my preparation to give a keynote talk at ISCRAM 2005 (www.iscram.org), I decided to expand my knowledge of crisis and emergency management, response and planning. I’m a DSS generalist, but I wanted to focus my talk on that more specific context. After some Google searching I found the website for the Emergency Management Institute (www.training.fema.gov/emiweb/). The Institute is operated by the U.S. National Emergency Training Center (NETC) in Emmitsburg, Maryland. In the U.S. Government bureaucratic hierarchy, EMI and NETC are part of the U.S. Fire Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Department of Homeland Security.I read some of the EMI training materials, followed links and then I registered to take the online course offered by EMI on the Incident Command System. I was skeptical about taking a “course”, but I decided I would try the inter
Incident Command System (ICS) is a model system used for the command, control, and coordination of various agencies during the response to an emergency incident. Any emergency incident, from a simple vehicular accident to a mass casualty disaster, could involve several different agencies such as police, fire, and emergency medical services departments to name a few. ICS provides the agencies involved in an incident with the principles necessary for them to work together effectively. Originally developed in the 1970s, ICS is now a fully developed model that can be effectively applied to all types of emergencies, regardless of the size of the incident or the number of agencies involved. The key to the effectiveness of ICS results from its standardized primary management principles and its common organizational structure. For the purposes of the CCRI, we use this a generic term. The actual structure and name of the command system varies greatly from community to community. Our main concer
The concept of ICS was developed more than 30 years ago, in the aftermath of a devastating wildfire in California. During 13 days in 1970, 16 lives were lost, 700 structures were destroyed, and over one-half million acres burned. The overall cost and loss associated with these fires totaled $18 million per day. Although all of the responding agencies cooperated to the best of their ability, numerous problems with communication and coordination hampered their effectiveness. As a result, the Congress mandated that the U.S. Forest Service design a system that would “make a quantum jump in the capabilities of Southern California wildland fire protection agencies to effectively coordinate interagency action and to allocate suppression resources in dynamic, multiple-fire situations.” The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection; the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services; the Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara County Fire Departments; and the Los Angeles City Fire Departme
ICS is a standardized on-scene incident management concept designed specifically to allow responders to adopt an integrated organizational structure equal to the complexity and demands of any single incident or multiple incidents without being hindered by jurisdictional boundaries. In the early 1970s, ICS was developed to manage rapidly moving wildfires and to address the following problems: • Too many people reporting to one supervisor; • Different emergency response organizational structures; • Lack of reliable incident information; • Inadequate and incompatible communications; • Lack of structure for coordinated planning among agencies; • Unclear lines of authority; • Terminology differences among agencies; and Unclear or unspecified incident objectives. In 1980, federal officials transitioned ICS into a national program called the National Interagency Incident Management System (NIIMS), which became the basis of a response management system for all federal agencies with wildfire ma
