AMU Emergency Management Public Safety

NIMS: Continuing Education Should Be a Requirement

When government and non-governmental (NGO) agencies adopt the National Incident Management System (NIMS), they agree to send their personnel to the various NIMS Incident Command System (ICS) courses. These include IS 100, 200, 300, and 400.

These courses are great to ensure that each person responding to an incident can operate within the ICS system and understand their position and the lines of authority, as well as, reporting requirements.

While some professions, such as the fire service, use of the ICS system on a daily basis, many do not.

The need to operate above current level

One of the tenements of ICS is that positions are filled with the most qualified person rather than a particular rank within an organization. Additionally, many response organizations do not have redundancy at the upper levels of the organization, as these personnel are often 40-hour personnel that do not have direct response requirements.

These two facts often require personnel to train and operate within the ICS system outside of their normal level in the organization. This is an overall good issue, as we can have well trained personnel that can step into the positions if needed. 

However, many of the concepts are not retained due to lack of use. This fact compounds in areas of the Midwest, which have statistically less large-scale disasters.

Not used on a daily basis

While large-scale disasters require the collaboration of numerous government and NGO organizations, many of the organizations involved do not utilize ICS as part of their everyday operations.

While remembering the basic ICS structure is relatively easy for a disaster worker who will have limited supervisory responsibility, many organizations will need to function at an emergency operations center (EOC) or serve in the upper portions of the ICS organization. This will require remembering the numerous forms that make up an IAP or the coordination structures that derive a multi-agency coordinating group that we learned long enough for the test in ICS 400.

Based on these realities, I proclaim it is time to enact an ICS refresher requirement to remain NIMS compliant.

Dr. Randall Hanifen serves as a shift commander at a medium-sized suburban fire department in the northern part of the Cincinnati area. Randall is the CEO/principal consultant of an emergency services consulting firm, providing analysis and solutions related to organizational structuring of fire and EMS organizations. He is the chairperson and operations manager for a county technical rescue team. From a state and national perspective, he serves as a taskforce leader for one of FEMA's urban search and rescue teams, which responds to presidential declared disasters. From an academic standpoint, Randall has a bachelor’s degree in fire administration, a master’s degree in executive fire service leadership, and a doctoral degree in business administration with a specialization in homeland security. He is the associate author of “Disaster Planning and Control” (Penwell, 2009), which provides first responders with guidance through all types of disasters.

Comments are closed.