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NFPA 1600 Now Known as NFPA 1660

Four standards combined into one!

Well, you need a score card to keep up. See news below on changes to NFPA 1600 and its new designation as NFPA 1660, combining it with three more standards:

“NFPA 1660, Standard for Emergency, Continuity, and Crisis Management:

Preparedness, Response, and Recovery, 2024 edition

“NFPA 1600, ‘Standard on Continuity, Emergency, and Crisis Management,’ 2019 edition, NFPA 1616, ‘Standard on Mass Evacuation, Sheltering, and Re-entry Programs,’ 2020 edition, and NFPA 1620, ‘Standard for Pre-Incident Planning’ 2020 edition, have been consolidated into a new standard, NFPA 1660. The technical committees responsible for these standards worked together to complete the consolidation, and the three committees continue to exist at this time.

“The National Fire Protection Association’s consolidation plan for its Emergency Response and Responder Safety standards with ‘similar content areas’ is intended to ‘increase usability, reduce errors and conflicts, and ultimately produce higher quality standards.’

“NFPA 1600 2019 edition’s chapters 4 through 10 are almost without change within the new 1660 and have retained their numbering. Chapter 1, ‘Administration’ has been expanded to encompass the broader scope, purpose, and application of the three predecessor standards. An expanded list of publications can be found in Chapter 2, and a much longer list of definitions can be found in Chapter 3. A new section 4.1 ‘Administration’ encompasses the scope, purpose, and application from 1600-2019 requiring subsections to be renumbered 4.2 through 4.9. Otherwise, there are no significant changes to the text from chapters 4-10 of NFPA 1600-2019.

“NFPA 1620 provides detailed guidance for the development of pre-incident plans that inform tactical decisions and more effective incident management. Documented information about building construction and utility systems, occupants and hazards within, and life safety, protection, and communications systems is essential. The need for NFPA 1620 became clear after catastrophic fires in warehouse occupancies. Since its first edition, 1620 has expanded into an ‘all-hazards’ planning tool that should be part of every emergency operations plan.

“The increasing frequency of disasters impacting widespread areas highlights the need to be able to evacuate and shelter populations. NFPA 1616 provides this guidance in a format closely aligned with 1600. At first glance it seems like 1616 is a standard for public authorities, but private sector entities should add it to their toolkits, too. Severe weather events, regional power outages, civil unrest, and other incidents call attention to the need for mass evacuation and sheltering.

“A digital version of the new NFPA 1660 is viewable at www.nfpa.org/1660, and the printed and PDF versions will be available from NFPA on January 27.”


This article was written by Donald L. Schmidt, ARM, CBCP, MCP, CBCLA, CEM® who is CEO of Preparedness, LLC, past chair of the NFPA 1600 technical committee, and current member of the NFPA 1600 and 1620 committees responsible for the new NFPA 1660. For additional information on NFPA 1600 including guidance on developing, implementing, and assessing a program using NFPA 1600, visit https://preparednessllc.com.

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.