I'm trying to find out if there are any NIMS 300 & 400 classes that are going to be held around the Louisiana/Texas area any time soon. Here in Louisiana we used to have several classes held yearly that were free to attend. Now we can't seem to find any, and when they are held (privately) it costs out the wahzoo to register for them. If anyone has any info I would (and my department) greatly appreciate it. Trying to get 100% NIMS compliant. Thanks again.
-Logue CIFD
This seems to be the same issue across the country. Sad when you put it into perspective. Most of us were using ICS since its beginnings in the late 60's. Federal Gov decides lets give it a new name and require everyone to learn new acronyms and tie it to federal funding. What a novel idea. Be interesting to see if indeed he Federal Gov has even met this requirement and how many.
The intent of NIMS is that everyone in an incident is on the same page, while 100 and 200 is very basic and DUUHHH kind of stuff, there are a lot of other things that NIMS brings to the table, to me, it all made more sense once I took 300 and 400 because the exercises involve large scale incidents and not just every day fire incidents. It shows how people from different organizations and departments can work with more ease if they are all on the same page and terminology. In our 300 and 400 class we ended up organizing a Katrina size incident from scratch.
I agree it is a bit much when you think of a house fire or a medical emergency but when the incident becomes town, city and state wide and involves people from across the country it is good to have everyone use the same language and terms so they know what their job, expectations and report structures are.
Last but not least I must say, from a teachers perspective 100, 200 and 700 are horrible dry and boring and it really does not help that the people in class don't really want to be there.
Does this mean that we will all be calling a water truck a tender and an airplane that carry's and drops water a tanker? Standardized ICS terminology vs. NIMS... West coast vs. East coast... Is this possible?
I took all of mine online and was alot easier that way I belive. go at your own pace and take all the notes you want. Or in my case print it and hilight it . Good luck