First thing we want to discuss is that the Incident Command System is "a systematic tool used for the command, control, and coordination of emergency response" and it is "a set of personnel, policies, procedures, facilities, and equipment, integrated into a common organizational structure designed to improve emergency response operations of all types and complexities.

ICS gets very technical and very in-depth……..I just want to talk about the basics today. What you will encounter with incidents at your facilities, but also what you should be thinking about as far as structure goes with your own team. In simple terms ICS means someone is in charge……and that person may change depending on when something happens and what is happening.

Who is responding as part of your team or who from our community emergency response system is responding? If you have a medical emergency during your service…….hopefully a doctor or nurse is in attendance…..you may also have a police officer in attendance and then you as part of the security team. So now in that same medical emergency situation during your service, we continue the analysis……who is in charge or who is calling the shots and giving direction? It is going to be the doctor or medical professional.

Now during this incident, someone calls 911 for medical help or an ambulance……and in 4 or 5 minutes an EMS response team, and ambulance and a police officer all arrive to your medical emergency…..who is going to be in charge ? If you guessed the medical or EMS response team you are right. It is a medical situation and they have the most experience and knowledge so they take command of the scene.

Now let’s say you have a stabbing or shooting within your ministry service. In the process you call 911 and you get a flood of police and medical people arriving. Now who is in charge? The first priority is going to be to get people medically evaluated and then transported to medical facilities. So who is technically in charge to start with? It would be the highest ranking member of the Medics or EMS personnel on scene…..but as that process gets going or most people are in the process of being transported to the hospital, your facility begins to transfer to the command of the police as this is now the scene of a crime and investigation. If you stand back and watch this transfer in action, it may be tough to see. In fact if the medical people on scene have plenty of personnel, you may actually see police, putting up yellow police tape and beginning to block things off and calling in detectives as the medical personnel are working on the patience……initial priority …..get medical help, get people transported to medical help……next start looking at the crime scene.

So back to some of the official discussion and overview:

ICS is based upon a changeable, scalable response organization providing a common hierarchy within which people can work together effectively. These people may be drawn from multiple agencies that do not routinely work together, and ICS is designed to give standard response and operation procedures to reduce the problems and potential for miscommunication on such incidents. ICS has been summarized as a "first-on-scene" structure, where the first responder of a scene has charge of the scene until the incident has been declared resolved, a more qualified responder arrives on scene and receives command, or the Incident Commander appoints another individual Incident Commander.

Key concepts

Unity of command

Common terminology

Management by objective

Flexible and modular organization

Span of control

Coordination

Incident action plans

The consolidated IAP is a very important component of the ICS that reduces freelancing and ensures a coordinated response. At the simplest level, all Incident Action Plans must have four elements:

• What do we want to do?
• Who is responsible for doing it?
• How do we communicate with each other?
• What is the procedure if someone is injured?

Comprehensive resource management

Comprehensive resource management is a key management principle that implies that all assets and personnel during an event need to be tracked and accounted for. It can also include processes for reimbursement for resources, as appropriate. Resource management includes processes for:

• Categorizing resources.
• Ordering resources.
• Dispatching resources.
• Tracking resources.
• Recovering resources.

Integrated communications

Composition

Incident commander

Command staff

General staff