Regional Response Demands Joint Command and Control

Tens of thousands of hours have been spent nationally in a quest to implement a national standard for incident response, but the question remains: Has this endeavor to implement the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS) been effective in reordering how the nation as a whole responds to emergencies and disasters?

Has the quest to have a chain of command, one that establishes clear command and control, been effective? Are we attempting to impose a system that does not function well within the day-to-day governance models that make up the American system?

The idea is that we respond together to protect people and property. Ultimately the establishment of mechanisms that allow for joint action via a coordinated response is the solution, but it's an arduous road. Federal mandates cannot overcome individual agencies' and jurisdictions' unwillingness to put aside turf issues in order to achieve the ultimate goal of a more rapid and efficient regional response.

On the Same Page
Having a federal-level system for how the nation as a whole responds to disasters - all governments responding similarly when bad things happen, either within their jurisdiction, or to another - is an admirable vision.

The ideal scenario is that everyone uses the same system and terminology when responding, which allows disparate agencies to come together quickly and avoid miscommunication when confusion ultimately rules - during disasters. This applies to localized emergencies where mutual aid resources come to the assistance of their neighbors, or in situations of a much broader scale like 9/11 and Katrina when the nation's resources are called upon to respond to a catastrophe of mega-proportions.

Conceptually this is working on paper. And it's working in practice to a degree. The U.S. Forest Service and Firefighting Resources of California Organized for Potential Emergencies (FIRESCOPE) gave birth to the ICS, and it has been well adopted by fire agencies - especially those in the Western states that must deal with wildland fires. The U.S. Forest Service's use of the National Interagency Incident Management System (NIIMS) pioneered this effort. Cyclops NIMS - that's NIMS with only one "I" - is the fairly new national standard that expanded use of the ICS beyond the fire service to all responding agencies.

For public agencies to receive federal funds, they must have adopted NIMS, and met the requirements for training staff and implementing its use within their jurisdictions. As previously noted, the fire service in general has done a good job, and the ICS has been expanded to other disciplines that also have adopted it. It's interesting to note that the ICS has expanded far beyond the intended audience of first responders. There are now ICS solutions for schools and hospitals. Even businesses have started using the ICS to handle crisis situations that impact their business continuity.

The Ultimate Solution
The best use of the ICS occurs when single agencies respond to emergencies. Go to most scenes and ask, "Who's in charge?" and typically someone will step up and say, "I'm the incident commander."

This is perhaps the extent of their implementation of the ICS. It is good, of course, that they know to identify the incident commander. But it becomes more complicated with multiple agency or discipline responses, even those within a single jurisdiction. In many cases, you'll still see several command posts being established, one per discipline. In one postmortem of a winter storm and surface-water flooding incident, someone proudly proclaimed, "We established unified command!"

The issue, however, was that the "unified" entities were police and fire. Public works also had a command post and leadership, but wasn't incorporated into "unified command" for the incident.

The ultimate solution is to implement a "train as you will