Incident Command
System Training

ARES Registration:

Berkeley County, WV

Jefferson County, WV

Montgomery County, MD

Washington County, MD

Allegany County, MD

"Blast From The Past"
WN3NQJ/WA3NQJ

The Incident Command System, or ICS, is an almost universally accepted organizational structure for the management of emergency and disaster situations of all sizes. The project was initiated to provide an overview of an important organizational system for emergency and disaster management.

One of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report strongly endorses the use of ICS. The recommendation on page 397 of the report states:

"Recommendation: Emergency response agencies nationwide should adopt the Incident Command System (ICS).When multiple agencies or multiple jurisdictions are involved, they should adopt a unified command. Both are proven frameworks for emergency response. We strongly support the decision that federal homeland security funding will be contingent, as of October 1, 2004, upon the adoption and regular use of ICS and unified command procedures. In the future, the Department of Homeland Security should consider making funding contingent on aggressive and realistic training in accordance with ICS and unified command procedures."

While the intended audience for this training is Amateur Radio emergency communications volunteers, this overview would benefit anyone who might become involved in an emergency response or disaster relief. As emergency volunteers, we may have to work directly with government emergency and disaster response organizations. However, this training is not intended as a comprehensive training package for emergency response professionals.

For some of our more experienced ARES and RACES members, this will hopefully be a useful review. For the many new people who have joined our ranks recently, this is essential training. At the end of the series of presentations we will provide you with an opportunity to take a test to see how well you have learned the basics of the Incident Command System.

The content was adapted from the Emergency Management Institute online course IS-195, "The Incident Command System." The Emergency Management Institute is part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The material that will be presented is the substance of Unit 1 of Course IS-195, with the addition of some supplemental information from the ICS training curriculum from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG).

Please pass this information on to anyone you think would benefit from it. Also, please feel free to link from your website to the training. I am hoping for as wide a distribution as possible. I am also very interested in your feedback. Please send any comments you have here.

The direct link http://www.sterlinginteractive.com/ics/login.php will take you to the login screen.