Modern world nowadays unfortunately is not insured from different emergencies, including single-car accidents to wide-ranging disasters that may happen any possible moment. Nobody is able to respond to them by their own, but every person should know what agencies are there to be involved in order to secure an effective response and provide efficient help. No matter if it is some routine incident such as house fire or any kind of major accidents, each of them require strong cooperation among several agencies and well-grounded list of appropriate actions.
One of such model tools of special importance for good command, control and coordination of a response that facilitates concerted acts of individual agencies is definitely the Incident Command System (ICS) (Auf der Heide, 1989). The first and foremost purpose of it, is the ensuring of the teamwork of separate agencies and merging of their efforts to achieving the mutual goal of normalizing the incident, as well as maintaining life, environment and property.
The Incident Command System was introduced after several large wildland fires that brought about death, harm and devastation in southern California in 1970. Different local, state and federal fire services that had to provide an impactful response, faced hundreds of problems with their coordination of operations during the incident. All fire services soon decided to unite in some sort of FIRESCOPE Program in order to solve those problems. As a result, there appeared the ICS, a principal outcome of their collaborative effort.
In case of the wildfires burning on any public lands, firefighters would immediately use the Incident Command System (ICS) to arrange organization and safety. Its management system evolved around peculiar design yardsticks and contemporary management concepts. Basically the efficiency, amenability and communications could be improved using five clearly designed functions in the System, namely Command, Operations, Planning, Logistics, and Finance.
The Command unit is managed by the first officer on the scene, known as Incident Commander (IC). He promptly defines objectives, strategies and priorities. This man bears responsibility for controlling safety, assigning firefighters and resources and can also deliver authority to other units if it is necessary. The Incident Commander, for example chooses what tools and equipment should be utilized in wildland fire operations and how the firefighting mission should be fulfilled.
The plans adopted by the IC and Operations staff then are accomplished by the Operations unit. Its first duty is the fire and rescue work. Operation stuff consist of both commanders and firefighters who work together to smother the fire. Different helicopters and airplanes equipped with permanently attached tanks and buckets are involved by this unit to enable exact dropping of hundreds of gallons of water from different distances (Brunacini, 2002). The Incident Action Plan is the regulatory requirement of the ICS. It is published by the Planning unit and presents some kind of guide to everyone working on the fire. The Action Plan includes safety information for firefighters, maps of the fire and adjacent grounds as well as contact information for the ICS staff (Auf der Heide, 1989). Finally, all kinds of service and support to firefighters such as medical supplies, food and communication equipment are provided by the Logistics unit.
In conclusion, only appropriate planning will succeed in organizing useful and efficient response activities. ICS with its carefully designed planning process would be able to control the problem, from minor incidents to complex major emergency.
References
Auf der Heide, Erik. (1989). Disaster Response: Principles of Preparation and Coordination. Mosby, Incorporated, pp. 134-139.
Brunacini, Alan V. (2002). Fire Command. Jones & Bartlett Learning, pp. 46-51.
