Tag national incident management system

Bring MAC Back

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Multi Agency Coordination, or MAC, is a concept most frequently applied to incident management. MAC Groups are the most commonly defined, being a collection of executives from various agencies, organizations, and/or jurisdictions who may commit the resources of their respective agencies, and often provide high-level decision-making and policy coordination to support an incident. Multi Agency Coordination Systems (MACS) have also been commonly defined, essentially as the combination of resources assembled to support the implementation of multi agency coordination. Multi agency coordination, as a concept, however, transcends MAC Groups and MAC Systems. In incident response we see multi agency coordination occur at the field level and in emergency operations centers (EOCs), the latter of which is generally viewed as an operational extension of the MAC Group. We even see the concept of multi agency coordination specifically extended into Joint Information Systems and Joint Information Centers. Multi agency coordination can and often does also exist across all phases and mission areas associated with emergency management. This is simply a reinforcement that emergency management is a team sport, requiring the participation and input of multiple organizations before, during, and after a disaster as well as in steady-state operations. MAC can be applied in many effective ways to support all of this.

But where did MAC (the more formal version) go? MAC was one of the foundational aspects of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) at one time. But now if you look for information on MAC, you will be pretty disappointed. The NIMS doctrine provides barely a single page on MAC, which might be fine for a doctrinal document if there were supplemental material. Yet, when looking through FEMA’s page for NIMS Components, there are no documents specifically for MAC. There used to be a pretty decent independent study training course for MAC, which was IS-701. That course, and the materials provided, no longer exist as of September 2016. (side note… lots of states and other jurisdictions assembled NIMS Implementations Plans. Many of those have not been updated in years and still reference this as a required training course). You will find only scant references to MAC in some of the ICS and EOC courses, but not with the dedicated time that once existed.

So why is this a problem? MAC as a concept is still alive and well, but without doctrine, guidance, and training to reinforce and support implementation, it will fall into disuse and poor practice. Just in the past two weeks alone, I’ve had direct conversations about MAC with three different clients: one in regard to a state COVID AAR; the other for all hazard planning, training, and exercises; and the other for state-level coordination of a response to invasive species. Superficially, MAC seems an easy concept. You get a bunch of executive-level stakeholders in a room, on a call, or in a video chat to talk about stuff, right?  Sure, but there are right and wrong ways to go about it and best practices which should be embraced. There is no single true model for MAC, which is appropriate, but absent any reasonable guidance, MAC may be misapplied, which could become an impediment to a response – something we’ve certainly seen happen.

All that said, we need to bring significant MAC content and guidance back. One of the better resources I’ve found out there comes from Cal OES. It’s a bit dated (2013) but still relevant. While it does have some language and application specific to California, it is an all-hazards guide (actually adapted from a wild-fire oriented FIRESCOPE document). The document is good, but I’d like to see a national approach developed by FEMA (properly the National Integration Center). MAC is an incident management fundamental, with application even broader than response. Their importance for response, especially larger more complex incidents, is huge, yet the information available on MAC is fairly dismissive. While some content exists in training courses, most of the courses where the content is found are not courses which many MAC Group members would be taking. We must also not confuse training with guidance. One does not replace the other – in fact training should reflect guidance and doctrine.

© 2022 Tim Riecker, CEDP – The Contrarian Emergency Manager

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

New EOC Toolkit Documents

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

FEMA announced the release of five EOC Toolkit documents on their website. In downloading these documents, I’m actually finding six documents, all with file dates of January 8, 2021. What’s there:

  • Tips for Healthcare Professionals: Coping with Stress and Compassion Fatigue
  • Tips for Disaster Responders: Preventing and Managing Stress
  • An Exercise for Creating Position Task Books from EOC Skillsets
    • Exercise Cards for the above referenced exercise (probably why they indicate only five documents, though this is a separate download)
  • EOC Financial Tools Reference Fact Sheet
  • EOC Operations Period Briefing Template

A quick review:

Coupling together the Tips for Healthcare Professionals and Tips for Disaster Responders as they both deal with workplace stress; these are really good documents that provide information, tools, and resources for recognizing and managing stress. Both are developed by the HHS Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. What I’d like to see, though, are documents actually developed for EOCs. It might seem a bit petty, while nearly 100% of the information in these documents is applicable to an EOC environment, this is yet another example of emergency management needing to borrow best practices from others and not getting something of our own. A simple change in the title and focusing the scope of the documents can go a long way. I would hope that FEMA and the National Integration Center would be supporting emergency management a bit more by at least giving us things that are intentionally developed for us.

I’m also coupling together the two documents of the EOC Skillsets Exercise instructions and cards; the purpose of the exercise is to create position task books (PTBs) from the list of EOC Skillsets. The exercise is used to help familiarize participants with the EOC Skillsets and to give leaders a practical, scenario-based experience in building position qualifications based on an organization’s needs and resources. I’ll be honest that I have some mixed feelings about this. I’m not sure of the real value of this exercise. Sure it’s nice to teach people new things and an exercise like this can be useful for getting buy-in on the qualifications certain positions should have, but the EOC Skillset Guide already gives us alignment of the EOC Skillsets for each of the primary EOC positions for the common, NIMS-identified EOC model organizations. That said, if your EOC has an organizational deviation from these models, the exercise could be helpful.

The EOC Financial Tools Reference Fact Sheet is a pretty good overview and list of resources for incident financial management, including guidelines and practices for reimbursement. A solid document. I think the document could be expanded upon by some experienced Finance/Admin Section Chiefs, Public Assistance SMEs, and Individual Assistance SMEs – to not only provide additional information, guidance, and tools, but also to address the continuum of financial management and reimbursement that starts with preparedness and goes through response then into disaster recovery, with the ultimate goal of maximizing reimbursement for eligible expenses.

Lastly, the EOC Operations Period Briefing Template. The document provides the pretty standard guidance for an Ops Period Briefing seen in ICS-related publications and introduces a couple of topics that are important to EOCs which are typically not found in field-level applications. That said, this is called a template. It’s laid out as a template. The instructions even say that the template is customizable. They give you the document as a PDF. <shrug>

Wrapping this up, these are documents that really can help EOCs and EOC personnel, but we see some shortfalls because of simple lack of thought, perspective, and utility. Continuous improvement, however, should always be a goal, and we need to start somewhere. I’m hoping these, and other documents will evolve as needs and opportunities are identified.

© 2021 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

The Contrarian Emergency Manager™

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Teaching ICS – We’re not there yet

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

Over the past week I’ve been neck deep in the updated ICS-300 and ICS-400 curriculum as I prepare to deliver these courses for a client.  While these courses, especially the ICS-300, have made some significant improvements from past versions, I’ve found what I perceive to be another challenge, perhaps a gap, in our collective approach to teaching incident management.

While ICS training should obviously focus on ICS, it seems we are missing an opportunity to provide some critical knowledge on emergency management (at least the response functions of EM) and incident management as an overall concept, especially when we get to the level of ICS-300.  I’m betting that most people taking the ICS-300 class know very little about emergency management and even less about the overall concepts of incident management.  While the ICS-300 is a good and worthwhile course for a great many supervisors within the ranks of public safety, it seems the requirement for ICS training puts a lot of this out of context.

While this might be fine for the ‘typical’ tactician, or even most unit leaders operating within an ICS organization, knowledge of what emergency management is and does, as well as the underlying concepts of incident management, will improve the ability of the response organization as a whole to function.  I echo this same sentiment for the EOC courses that have been developed.

While we strive to have the growth of many public safety professionals to include ICS position-specific training, we also have to be realistic in recognizing that most jurisdictions simply don’t have the capacity to make this happen.  Instead, they rely on a more ad-hoc incident management approach, which will generally serve them well.  Of course, the most challenging time is transitioning from the more ‘routine’ type 5 and 4 incidents into the larger extended response operations of a type 3 incident.  This is when people need to think beyond the normal approach of a largely tactics-focused response, to a system which still necessarily includes tactics, but builds a response organization meant to support and sustain those tactical operations.  What they learn from the ICS-300 may be the most amount of training they have outside of tactical applications.

In such an ad-hoc system, someone put into Logistics, or even more specifically the Supply Unit Leader, may be left wondering how to obtain resources when the answer to that question has always been dispatch.  It may not readily dawn on them to open the phone book (digitally or physically) or to contact the emergency management office to find the resources they need.  It seems silly, but in the context of incident management, dispatch may be all they know.  Similarly, someone assigned as the Situation Unit Leader may be re-creating the wheel when it comes to identifying what information is needed, where to get it from, what analysis needs to take place, and how to tie it all together.  Why?  Because they may not have been made aware of the greater system they function within. Their mental default is the job they usually do for the agency or department they work for.

On a whim, I did some key word searches within the new ICS-300 course student manual.  The term ‘incident management’ comes up with a few hits, mostly centered around NIMS-oriented content or included in the broader term of ‘incident management team’.  Very little explanation is really given on what incident management is.  Rather, the term is just put out there, seemingly with the expectation that the student knows what it is.   A search for the term ‘emergency management’ only comes up with two hits, one being part of ‘Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC)’ (note: no context is given for what this is), and the other use is a rather throwaway use when discussing demobilization.  Emergency management as a function is actually never discussed.

The Reader’s Digest version of all this is that we aren’t including critical contextual information about the systems ICS functions within when we teach more advanced ICS courses.  This inadvertently can close people’s minds to opportunities to improve incident management by extending their thinking beyond tactics and beyond the scope of their home agency.  A podiatrist must still learn about the systems of the whole body before they focus on the foot.  Teaching people, especially at the threshold of ICS-300, about the system of emergency management and the concepts of incident management are critical before we start teaching them the specifics of a particular tool.  Doing so will make their understanding and use of this tool far more effective.

Some may wonder if I will ever be happy with how we teach ICS (really, incident management as a whole).  That day may yet come, but to get there I think we first need to reassess the actual learning needs of practitioners, and do so with fresh eyes instead of trying to mark up the same materials.  I know over the years of my criticisms of ICS training I’ve stimulated a lot of discussion, not only nationally, but internationally.  Many have been hugely supportive of the ideas I’ve put forward, and some have contributed to the dialogue.  Of course, there are some who have been resistant and defensive.  I’m thankful to those who have been receptive and I’m happy to have contributed to the energy behind changes that have been made, and will continue to do so until we, as a collective, are satisfied that the best possible training is being made available.  Change is often times progressive and incremental. It doesn’t happen overnight.

As usual, I’m happy to receive any comments and feedback you might have on these ideas.  Please spread the word and encourage feedback from those who might not be aware.  Emergency management is an ever-evolving practice.  Though we may not have answers, we must continue asking questions.

©2019 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC℠®

 

New FEMA EOC Training Courses Announced

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

Last night FEMA issued a NIMS Alert (13-19) announcing the release of some new and revised Emergency Operations Center (EOC) training courses.  These include:

E/L/G 191 – Emergency Operations Center/Incident Command System Interface

IS 2200 – Basic Emergency Operations Center Functions

E/L/G 2300 – Intermediate Emergency Operations Center Functions

This is also including an updated G 402 NIMS Overview for Senior Officials.

FEMA is hosting a series of webinars on these courses next week.  Information can be found at the bottom of this post.

First, a bit of background on the nomenclature, for those who might not be familiar.

  • E-coded courses are those offered ‘in residence’ by FEMA, typically at the Emergency Management Institute (EMI)
  • L-coded courses are those delivered by FEMA at various locations, typically at the request of state and local governments
  • G-coded courses are those able to be delivered by state emergency management offices
  • IS-coded courses are independent study courses available from training.fema.gov

Providing a bit of context to these courses.  First, the E/L/G 191 course.  This course has been in dire need of a re-write for a very long time.  While FEMA/EMI certainly have a challenge of developing courses that are applicable to most jurisdictions, I’ve long found the 191 course to be inadequate for most.  Interestingly enough, I found the content of the new IS 2200 course alone to be far superior to any previous content of the 191 course.  That said, I’m interested in seeing what the redesign has brought for the 191 course, hopefully increasing the utility of this course to participants.

Speaking of the IS 2200 course, I just completed this course on EMI’s Independent Study website.  Overall, I found the course to be solid, addressing all the foundational information needed by stakeholders to understand what an EOC is a does, in general terms, how it might be organized, and what it’s primary tasks are.  The course has heavy reference to NIMS, as expected, and provides several hyperlinks to additional resources of relevant interest.  While the course does reflect much of the EOC content from the updated NIMS document, the materials were thoughtfully organized with a fair amount of supplement and context, examples, and even small scenario-driven activities to support a better understanding of EOCS.  As indicated previous, it has a fair amount of information on the concepts of the ICS/EOC interface, which I think are of significant value to people who are new to the world of EOCs.  The course also stresses the value of emergency operations plans, something that had been missing from ICS courses for years prior to an earlier update.

There are some areas where I find the IS 2200 course to be lacking.  First of all, there were some typos and grammatical errors in the product.  While this might not seem like a big deal to some, quality counts.  Similarly, many of the photos used in the course are recycled from many years back of training and are of poor quality and resolution.  Granted, photos from EOCs are generally not exciting or sexy, but higher quality and updated hair styles do contribute to quality.  The traditional Planning P was referenced quite a bit in the course, with the caveat that the EOC should develop its own planning cycle.  I found this to be a bit lazy and would have liked to see some guidance on an EOC-oriented Planning P.  Lastly, I would have liked to see some material on departmental EOCs (DOCs) as well as the interface between a dispatch/public safety answering point (PSAP) and a local EOC.  Perhaps we will see this latter topic addressed in either the 191 course or the Intermediate EOC course.

E/L/G 2300 is the Intermediate EOC course.  I’m very curious to learn more about this course when I sit in on one of next week’s webinars.  The biggest challenge that FEMA has in this course, as I see it, is that there are several organizational models which can be used by EOCs, including the ICS-based model, the incident support model, the departmental model, and the emergency support function model.  This variety, which I think is good to have to help jurisdictions and agencies manage in the way that is most comfortable for them, does create significant difficulty to teach how, in any significant detail, an EOC should function.  While I would love for this course to dive into the EOC’s planning process and key in on roles and responsibilities of positions similar to the ICS 300 course, I think that detail might need to be reserved for a customized course, which I’ve built for various entities through my career.  That said, I’ll be sure to report out following the webinars on my thoughts on the information we are provided.

Additional information is available on these offerings through a series of webinars hosted by FEMA.  The dates and times of the webinars:

  • May 28, 2019 at 11:00 am (EST)
  • May 28, 2019 at 3:00 pm (EST)
  • May 30, 2019 at 11:00 am (EST)
  • May 30, 2019 at 3:00 pm (EST)

 The webinars will be presented through their NIMS ICS Training Forum – Adobe Connect platform here:

The Adobe Connect platform is for displaying visuals and for chatroom only. Audio will be provided using the following conference call line and pin #:

  • Conference Telephone #: 800-320-4330
  • Pin #: 884976

© 2019 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®℠

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10 Considerations for Your EOC

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Many jurisdictions, agencies, and organizations have emergency operations centers (EOCs) identified in their emergency plans to support incident response and recovery operations.  Through my career, I’ve seen all manner of EOCs, used to support entire incidents or just specific missions, ranging in size from just a handful of people to well over 100 people, various organizational models, and even varying degrees of successful implementation.  I’ve also seen many different locations for EOCs.

An EOC can be established anywhere, but just like any broad statement, there are a number of caveats to that.  Here are 10 things to consider in identifying a location for your EOC:

  1. Out of harm’s way

While it’s difficult to determine where an incident will strike, most jurisdictions have areas that may be less susceptible than others.  While it’s certainly convenient to have your EOC off a major highway, consider that a significant accident on that highway will impact access to your facility.  Locating your EOC near an industrial district or in a flood plain is just asking for trouble.  Be smart about where you locate your EOC relative to your geographic risk profile.

  1. Plenty of parking and accessibility

Few things are more frustrating than arriving to an EOC and not having a place to park.  That’s simply a silly problem to have and reflects greatly on shortsightedness.  If you are stuck in a certain location, plan for an overflow lot, signage, and a shuttle.  Also make sure your building is accessible.  I’ve seen far too many EOCs located either in basements or upper floors without any elevators or other ability for access for people with disabilities.

  1. Utility services and communications with redundancies

It practically goes without saying in our current age of technology, but we need to ensure full utility service in our EOCs.  This includes the basics like electricity, HVAC, and water, but also internet, terrestrial telephone, cellular service, television service (either cable or satellite), and radio communications.  The best facilities will have redundancies in these services to the greatest extent possible.  Generators (with fuel) are rather essential.  Engage your IT staff to ensure maximum flexibility and connectivity with wifi and wireless printing, while still maintaining secure networks.  Each work space should also be able to easily access outlets without running an excess of extension cords (but always have some on hand!).

  1. Meal and break rooms

Constant engagement fuels stress and exhaustion which leads to degradation of our ability to perform.  While work in an EOC may not be so physically strenuous, it can be mentally draining and having respite locations are important.  Both for respite and the sake of keeping work spaces clean, you want to have a separate dining area that can accommodate seating for everyone (at least in shifts), a place to wash hands, refrigeration of food and beverages, potable water and coffee/tea, and space for prepared food to be delivered and maintained within safe temperatures.

  1. Seating and tables

It seems odd to have to say this, but adequate seating is quite important.  I’ve been in EOCs that simply didn’t have it.  While I appreciate the ability of a jurisdiction to set up an ad-hoc EOC, a single six foot table and a few folding chairs aren’t likely to meet your needs.  If you don’t have a dedicated EOC (not everyone needs one!), meeting and conference rooms may have plenty of seating, though if they are too small, you will be extremely limited.  Thankfully folding tables and chairs are reasonably inexpensive and easy to store.  Consider the functional spaces you need to accommodate your EOC’s organization, be it ICS-based, Incident Support Model-based, or Emergency Support Function-based.  Functional groups should have their own work spaces and the arrangement and workspaces they need to accommodate and facilitate their functions.  Always plan for more people than you expect!

  1. Away from distractions

Your EOC shouldn’t be in a space that other wise will receive a lot of foot traffic.  While co-location of facilities can seem like a great idea before an incident, having your EOC in the same building as a shelter or your fire department is probably a bad idea.  It’s not only distracting, but also infringes on utility and communication usage, and even security.

  1. Security

Speaking of security, ensure that access to your EOC is limited only to those who should be there.  Generally, personnel not working in or serving the EOC should not have access to it.  It’s a pain to have civilians, the media, or other random persons wandering into an EOC, especially when they want immediate answers to complicated questions or feel their needs should be addressed first.  Along with ensuring access controls, security procedures should be in place, including a staffed reception desk and sign-in.  Personally, I also prefer armed security (law enforcement) for most EOCs.

  1. Meeting and briefing space

Meetings and briefings are a necessity in incident management.  It’s a way in which we share information, work through problems, and make decisions.  Of course there is always the danger of personnel getting stuck in a perpetual meeting, but that’s a topic for another blog post.  Ideally, your EOC should have adequate breakout space for these meetings and briefings.  An open space with a podium may be necessary for media briefings, and meeting rooms with conference call and video conference capabilities may also be required.  Having a separate space allows a meeting to take place without distraction from the general EOC activity while also being able to discuss sensitive information.

  1. Display space

One of the hottest commodities in an EOC is display space.  Space to project with an LCD projector, hang chart paper or maps, and write on with a dry-erase marker is pretty essential to helping ensure that people are informed and information is tracked.  Higher-tech EOCs may elect to have flat screen monitors mounted on the wall, as well.  Easel stands and portable white boards can augment this and make your space more flexible as well.

  1. A good backup site

One of the best tips I can provide about having a great space for an EOC is to have two!  You will be thankful you have that second space identified and planned for in a continuity situation.  If you don’t need it, it can always be used for something else, but if you do need and don’t have it, you will be scrambling to find a location, get your personnel there, and ensure you have supplies, equipment, and other needs addressed.

 

There are certainly a number of other considerations for EOCs, but paying heed to these ten will get you far.  Your EOC doesn’t need to be a dedicated facility.  It can be any reasonably flexible open space, such as town hall, a large meeting space, a training facility, a hotel conference space, or even a warehouse – your needs should determine your space.  Once you have identified your space, make it functional and ensure that you have an EOC plan and procedures. Train staff, develop job aids to support their tasks, and exercise your plans regularly!

© 2019 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®℠

We Only Need One ICS

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

I came across an article yesterday posted on EMS1/AMU’s blog about EMS adopting an incident command system.  It’s an article that leaves me with a lot of questions.

I want to examine some individual statements within the article.

  1. “Many EMS providers lack training and awareness about implementing an incident command structure.”

 

This is 100% true, but I’ll also expand this statement across much of public safety and emergency management.  Aside from well-experienced practitioners of ICS, which there are relatively few compared to the greater public safety/EM community, most simply aren’t equipped to implement a significant incident management system.  The biggest reason is that ICS training sucks.

 

  1. “EMS organizations have only recently recognized the value and need for such a command structure as part of their response strategy.”

 

I would suggest that this is partly true, but in many parts of the nation, requirements and standards have been established by way of executive order, state and regional EMS protocols, and other means for EMS to use ICS.  Many of these have been in place since the 90s, before HSPD-5 and NIMS requirements, but certainly with the emergence of NIMS in 2003, this has largely been a standard of practice for EMS, if not a requirement in many places (and under specific circumstances, such as required through OSHA 1910.120).  While I understand that ‘standards’ and ‘requirements’ don’t necessary define value, they essentially dictate a need.

 

  1. There was a recognition that “EMS providers were having difficulty applying fireground incident command practices to EMS calls.”

 

While I agree with what I think is the spirit and intent of this statement and bring this back to my comments on item 1 above, I’m still cringing at the ‘fireground incident command’ phrase in this statement.  ICS isn’t just for the fireground. While it may have been born in wildfires, that was decades ago.  We are now officially in 2019 and should be well past this concept that ICS is only for the fireground.  Even if we disregard, for the sake of discussion, the requirements for all responders to use ICS, such as those in OSHA 1910.120, which predate NIMS, HSPD-5 was signed almost 17 years ago!  Nothing in HSPD-5 or the original NIMS document elude to the current implementations of ICS being a fireground system.  It was to be applied to all responders.

 

  1. “During a response, providers did not establish a formal command structure”

 

Totally true.  This applies, however, not just to EMS, but to most of public safety.  See my comment for item 1.

 

  1. “In 2012… they began to research various fire and EMS command models that were scalable and practical for all types of critical EMS calls.”

 

I’m not sure why there is a need to look past NIMS ICS.  Perhaps we are stepping back to my comment on item 1 again, but if you understand the system, you can make it work for you.

~

It is absolutely not my intent to throw negativity on the author or the people who spearheaded the implementation of an EMS-specific ICS as cited in this article.  They clearly identified what they perceived to be a need and tried to address it.  I give them credit for that.  It should be seen, though, that they identified many of the same needs that ICS was developed to address in the first place.  They then created a system (which has many of the same qualities of ICS) that is focused on EMS needs during an incident.  The issue here is bigger than this article, and certainly more endemic.  Unfortunately, the article doesn’t really provide much detail on their ‘provider in command’ model, but what they describe can all be accomplished through NIMS ICS if properly utilized.  They even identify objectives of their model, which are really just pre-identified incident objectives.  They certainly don’t require a different model.  I think, however, what they largely accomplished was an audience-specific training program to show how elements of ICS can be implemented.  I just don’t think they needed to change the model, which is what the article seems to indicate.

Sadly, trying to make customized adaptations of ICS is nothing new.  For years, some elements of the fire service have dug in with certain models which are fire-ground centric.  Other disciplines have dome similar things.  It’s worth mentioning that FEMA had developed a number of discipline-specific ICS courses, such as ICS for Public Works or ICS for Healthcare.  While the intent of these courses is to provide context and examples which are discipline-specific (which is a good practice) rather than new models specific to these disciplines, I think that has inadvertently given some the impression that there are different systems for different disciplines.  ICS is ICS.

Once again, I put the blame on poor training curriculum.  When a system is developed and proven to work under a wide variety of circumstances and for a wide variety of users, yet users keep feeling a need to develop adaptations for themselves, this is not a failure of the system or even the users, it’s a failure of the training.

There are facets of public safety and emergency management that are generally not using ICS as well or as often as they should.  EMS is one of them.  As an active EMT for over a decade (including time as a chief officer), I can attest that (in general) ICS training for EMTs is abysmal.  The text books tend to skim over the pillars of ICS and focus on the operational functions of triage, treatment, and transport.  While these are important (for a mass casualty incident… not really for anything else), they fail not only in adequately TEACHING the fundamental principles of ICS (which can and should be used on a regular basis), but they fall well short of actually conveying how to IMPLEMENT ICS.  Further, much of the training provided includes a concept of ‘EMS Command’, which is opposed to what is in ICS doctrine.  We shouldn’t be encouraging separate commands and ICS structures at the tactical level of the same incident.

A few years ago I had started a crusade of sorts to get a better ICS curriculum developed.  There was a lot of support for this concept across the public safety and EM community, not only in the US but other nations as well.  Perhaps with the coming of the new year that effort needs to be reinvigorated?

© 2019 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

A Discussion on Training Needs for the EOC Incident Support Model

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Last week I wrote a piece on the Incident Support Model for Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs).  The article got a good amount of attention which prompted some dialogue both on and off line with a variety of practitioners.  So for those who might be integrating this model into their plans, let’s consider what training might be needed to support implementation.

First, I’ll say that I feel foundational ICS training (hopefully we’ll eventually have something better than what we have now since ICS training still sucks) is still necessary, even though the Incident Support Model deviates significantly from the traditional ICS model.  A couple of reasons… first, others are still using ICS, be it in EOCs or in the field.  Second, the principles and concepts of ICS still largely apply to the Incident Support Structure, regardless of the differences in organizational composition.  Perhaps only to the ICS 200 level is necessary since those functioning in an Incident Support Model organization only need be aware of it.

Next, I think we then need an overall Incident Support Model course.  I would envision this similar to an ICS-300 course, which has a more in-depth exploration of the entire organizational structure of the Incident Support Model and discusses the processes inherent in the system, such as the planning process, which would see some revisions to at least the positions involved under this model as compared to that for ICS.

Position-specific training is important, be it for an in-house EOC team(s) or for incident management teams which may be deployed to EOCs using this model.  While many of the position-specific courses in existence for a traditional ICS model are analogous to what we see in the Incident Support Model, there are significant enough changes, I think, to require different training specific for this model if we expect a professionally functioning organization (and we do).

One thing currently missing in the position specific courses is an EOC manager course.  While there is an Incident Commander course, which provides a lot of great information, there are significant enough differences between running an EOC and running an incident command post.  That said, I’m not so sure we need an entirely different course.  Given the propensity for incident management teams (IMTs) to work in EOCs, I think an additional module in the IC training may suffice to ensure that ICs are equipped to work in all environments.

Looking at the composition of the general staff of the Incident Support Model, we can first start with the Situational Awareness Section Chief.  From the ICS IMT model, we have great training for Situation Unit Leaders, which can largely apply to this position in the Incident Support Model with just a few changes, mostly addressing the expansion and elevation of the role.

The new Planning Support Section Chief would require very different training from what current exists for the IMTs. While in-depth training on the planning process is still relevant (with changes to make it specific to this model), as is training on demobilization planning, new training is required to address future planning, which doesn’t have as much content in the current Planning Section Chief course as needed.

Center and Staff Support Section Chief training is largely internal logistics, so really just requires a course that is narrowed in scope from the traditional Logistics Section Chief course, with perhaps some additional content on occupational and facility support matters.

Lastly, the Resource Support Section Chief.  This one is a monster.  It’s really an amalgamation of the Operations Section Chief, the Logistics Section Chief, and the Resource Unit Leader, along with Finance/Admin (if you subscribe to putting it in this section).  There is clearly a lot going on here.  Very little of the traditional ICS IMT courses really apply to this in an EOC environment given the difference in scope and mission for an EOC.  This largely requires completely new training based on functional coordination, mission assignments, and support to deployed resources.  This is a course that will require a lot of work to ground it in reality while also providing enough flexibility to allow for how each EOC may organize within this section.  Similar to the Operations Section in a traditional ICS model, this section may have the most variety from facility to facility and incident to incident.

Certainly other training may be needed, but the command and general staff positions are probably the most urgent to address.  In lieu of FEMA providing this training, some are developing their own training to support implementation of this model.  I’d love to hear about what has been done, the challenges faced, and the successes had.  Given my own passion and interest, I’d certainly love an opportunity to develop training for the Incident Support Model.

© 2018 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

The NIMS Refresh, aka NIMS 3.0

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

This morning my inbox was inundated with notices from FEMA and from colleagues about the release of the ‘refreshed’ NIMS, which has finally occurred at almost exactly 18 months after the draft of this document was released.  You can find the new document here. 

As I’m reading through the updated document, there are a few things catching my eye:

  • The term ‘center management system’ has apparently been scrapped, thankfully. First of all, there should not be a separate system for managing emergency operations centers (EOCs) and similar facilities.  I’ve seen the greatest success come from an organization model that mirrors ICS.  Second, the acronym CMS is most commonly related to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, particularly in regard to the CMS rules for healthcare facility preparedness.  (Want to know more about this?  See my article here)
  • Multi-Agency Coordination as a concept is briefly defined and referenced often without being described enough. It’s such an essential concept of incident management, yet it’s being paid very little heed. There is material on a MAC Group, which, while an implementer of multi-agency coordination at a policy level, is not the only multi-agency coordination that takes places within incident management.
  • The final version still uses the term ‘EOC Director’.  This is a term that is fundamentally incorrect when held to ICS doctrine.  Those in charge of facilities in ICS are called managers.  An EOC, even a virtual one, functions as a facility.  Similarly, the EOC analogs to the command staff, should be referred to as ‘management staff’ in an EOC, not command staff.
  • In the draft there were nearly two pages of references to federal EOC-like facilities. It was unnecessary and irrelevant to the document.  Thankfully those references and descriptions were removed.
  • One of my favorite graphics continues to be used! Figure 10 on page 48 is, to me, one of the most meaningful graphics in all of emergency management.  It pays heed to all critical elements in a response and shows the flow of requests and assistance.
  • I’m a big fan of the Essential Elements of Information (EEI) concept included in the Incident Information section of the document. This should serve as a foundation to all situation assessment and size up documents in all public safety disciplines, moving forward.
  • The appendices offer some additional information, but are largely redundant of the core document.

Overall, NIMS 3.0 is a good document to move forward with.  While there are some elements that I don’t necessarily agree with, none of them are damaging to our field of practice.  While NIMS remains our core doctrine for response, what is missing from this document that we saw heavily included in earlier versions was the concept of integrating NIMS into other aspects of emergency management.  Primarily, it is something that must be prepared for.  It simply isn’t enough to include a one-liner in your emergency plans saying that you are using NIMS.  The elements of NIMS, and not just ICS, but things like EOC management, multi-agency coordination, resource management, and joint information management, need to be fully engrained in your plans.  Plans serve as the foundation for preparedness, so what is in our plans must be trained on and exercised in a continuous cycle.  I would have liked to have seen some very apparent reference to the National Preparedness Goal in this document.  Otherwise, it appears to many that these doctrine are unrelated.

Now that the center management system is gone and they were less heavy handed with EOC management concepts, I wonder what that means for training related to EOC management.  The current FEMA curriculum on EOC management is simply horrible (thus why I’ve created EOC management courses for various jurisdictions).

What are your thoughts on the NIMS refresh?  What did they do well?  What did they miss? Was it too safe with too few changes?  Were there other changes needed to improve our coordination of incident management?

As always, thanks for reading!

© 2017 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

NIMS is Worthless, Unless You Put it into Action

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

It’s so often that I hear people proclaim in response to a problem that NIMS will fix it.  I’ve written in the past that many organizations reference the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS) in their plans, as they should, but it’s often a reference with no substance.  The devil is in the details, as the saying goes; and the details of implementation are necessary to ensure that difficulties can be overcome.

The premise is simple… NIMS is a doctrine, only as valuable as the paper you print it on.  So fundamentally, NIMS has no value – unless it is implemented.  This human factor is the biggest hurdle organizations and jurisdictions must face, yet so many are lulled into a false sense of security because they cite it in their plans and they’ve taken some ICS courses.  I encourage every organization to review the NIMS doctrine and give your organization an honest assessment of how you are actually following it.  It’s bound to be pretty eye opening for many.

nims_document

We also have to keep in mind that NIMS isn’t just for your own organization.  While there are plenty of great practices in NIMS for your own organization, the greatest value in it is for multi-agency responses.  These don’t have to be to the extent of Hurricane Katrina or a massive wildfire, either.  Multi-agency responses occur in most jurisdictions every day – even what we regard as some of the most simple or routine incidents require multiple agencies to respond.  While the actions and responsibilities of these agencies are fairly rote and well-practiced, a slight increase in complexity can cause significant changes.

Consider that different agencies, even those within the same discipline have some different ways of doing things.  These can be simply in the mechanics of what they do, or they can be driven by procedures, equipment, or personality.  Some of this may be in writing, some may not.  Where this matters is in tactics.  NIMS won’t solve differences in tactical application or ensuring interoperability.  Only preparedness can accomplish that.  Before an incident occurs, we need to be having regular conversations with other agencies within our jurisdiction and outside of it.  How often do you exercise with your mutual aid partners?  I mean really exercise with them…  It’s great that you all arrive to the exercise site and set up your own stuff, but how about mixing and matching equipment?  What will work?  What won’t?  How will it impact tactical application?  These are some of the most meaningful lessons learned.

Bottom line – don’t try to pencil-whip NIMS as the solution to your problems.  It’s meaningless unless it’s actually put into action – and the way to proactively do that is through preparedness efforts.   Work together through POETE activities – Planning, Organizing, Equipping, Training, and Exercises.  Once you put the concepts of NIMS into action, then it will work for you!

How has your organization implemented NIMS concepts?

© 2017 –  Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

Customization of ICS

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

Even since before the National Incident Management System (NIMS), I’ve seen individuals and organizations have a desire to customize the Incident Command System (ICS).  This has always been troubling to me, as customization is fully contradictory to using a standardized system.

ICS offers an abundance of flexibility.  If you are familiar enough with the system, its foundational features, and the intent of the roles and responsibilities within the system, you can meet practically every need utilizing these functions and features.  Is ICS perfect?  No.  Is it the best we have?  Yep, it sure is.  Having many years as a practitioner, trainer, and evaluator of ICS, I’m confident that it can meet 95% of needs that an organization will have.

Generally, I find the argument that many organizations who insist on customization put forward is that the rigidity of ICS does not accommodate their needs, structure, and culture. On the occasion that I’ve had to sit down with the organization’s personnel and ask questions about what they are trying to accomplish, it becomes quite clear that they simply don’t have a good understanding of ICS.  Some can be fairly obvious, such as moving the Safety Officer position to Operations.  Others require a bit more analysis, such as creating an element in the Operations Section to address security needs of their own facility.  Security of your own facility is actually a responsibility of the Facilities Unit within Logistics, not an Operations responsibility.

Foundationally, let’s consider the main purpose of ICS – interagency coordination.  ICS is a standardized system which supports integration, cooperation, and unity of effort between and among multiple organizations.  One of the main reasons I see organizations struggling to fit elements into an ICS organization chart is because some simply don’t belong there.  If you have functions internal to your own agency, even if they are used during emergency operations, but don’t interact with others, I honestly couldn’t care if you organize them within ICS, so long as they are accounted for within your own organization’s own chain of command.  There is no doctrine or best practice that requires organizations to account for every internal function within an ICS org chart.

The other reason, which I eluded to earlier, for organizations trying to customize ICS for their purposes, is a lack of understanding of ICS.  While I’m aware that some people who have done this might only have taken ICS 100, giving them only a scratched surface of ICS knowledge, which they easily misapply since they don’t have a good understanding of the fundamental concepts of ICS.  However, I’m aware of plenty of individuals who have taken ICS 300 and possibly ICS 400 who still fall into this trap.  I feel this situation stems from a result of misapplied learning, which ultimately comes from poor ICS curriculum.  (If you want to read more on my opinions on how ICS Training Sucks ⇐visit here).

ICS training should not only provide learning to support operational implementation of ICS concepts, but also adequate preparedness activities, such as integrating ICS into plans, policy, and procedures.  Current training leaves many people feeling they know enough about ICS to integrate it into these important documents, but they feel compelled to be creative, when not only is creativity generally not required, it flies in the face of a standardized system.  ICS has an abundance of flexibility which can accommodate a multitude of functions; one just has to relate these to the fundamental features of ICS to identify where they might go.  I’m not opposed to creating a new organizational element, just make sure that it fits appropriately, without duplicating efforts, usurping responsibility from another standard element, or violating span of control.

Consider this: will your organization chart integrate with others?  If so, how?  Is there operational integration or is it through an agency representative?  If the answer is the latter, there is less concern, but if there is an expectation for operational integration or shared functions, such as Planning or Logistics, sticking to the standards is even more important.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on ICS customization, the reasons behind it, and the ramifications of it.  Fire away!

© 2017 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC