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Use of NIMS
Most of us have had some amount of NIMS. We have had the training, but how many of us actually are using it? If this is the way we are taught then why not use it as a tool for so many things. We as a volly dept. use part of it but not all of it. I would like to hear what other departments are doing with the new found training.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by ILDisasterEMT on
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Well first off, I think a lot of people use NIMS and ICS interchangeably. ICS (Incident Command System) is part of NIMS (National Incident Management System) but not all of it. That being said, I dont think any department or agency that I have run across so far uses ICS in its entirety. Many, if not most agencies are requiring members to take at least ICS 100, 200 and 700 which I think is a great idea. Commanders, chiefs etc often do and should probably take more than those three classes (at least adding 800).
The aspect of ICS which is going to become problematic very shortly is that lots of your average joe fire fighters and EMTs dont really even know what it is and within the the next 3-5 years, the federal government and hence state, local and municipal agencies are going to require a lot stricter compliance, even in some cases tying federal and state funding to the use of ICS.
One of the ways that we are seeing ICS being used on a very grass roots level is the use of common language, that is eliminating 10-codes and other jargon which allows a greater degree of interoperability between law enforcement, fire, EMS, military and state and federal disaster teams because they can actually speak to each other. I think there are two other ways that ICS is immediately beneficial. One is having some sense of who is in command of a given situation. While a given fire chief or EMS ops manager may be very well qualified in their given field and certainly in the running of their agency, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have the skill or education or experience to run a large scale MCI or other disaster. So the fact that ICS sets parameters for who can be in control of what takes a lot of the guess work out of things by saying that once someone of greater rank or with more experience in a given area shows up, command is turned over to them. The other is that it provides a built in structure for who is taking care of what. Instead of having to do this on scene at the time of the incident, we can refer to the ICS command and general staff structure and know automatically what kinds of officers and managers need to be in place and who is in charge of everything from staging available assets to establishing how many portable toilets are going to be needed and where they will be place. ICS also, when followed correctly, prevents an IC or other officer from getting overwhelmed by establishing a span of control which says that a given team or task force, etc should be no smaller than 3 individuals and that the maximum number that any given person (aside from the IC) should be control of is 7.
It seems to me that if no one used ICS for anything other than the above, it would smooth out a lot of situations and its benefits would be easily seen.
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Permalink Reply by mike wright on
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We still have a departments here that have not taken or do not plan on taking the nims coure. They dont do alot of training that they should but who is to judge a department around here. I am in rural country, but it is nice to be on the same page with all of the departments.
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The really exasperating part is that there is no reason for chiefs, officers and fire fighters not to take the basic courses. They're free and can be completed in a single weekend online. Its either laziness of refusal to change or both. As for those departments that dont plan on taking the courses, as I say, in a few years, they wont have a choice.
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Permalink Reply by Engineco913 on
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Don't forget those companies who CHEATED to be elgible for the grant money by being compliant. I still feel as tough tey should have random questions to absolutely prevent cheating from happening, especially on a free online course. It's not fair to those who actually read and absorbed the true intent of the training.
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Our chief makes us take it, because of the grant money issue and it will be valuable in some cases. Especially the officers such as me. We dont cheat because the last 4 classes were regular classes not online.
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Permalink Reply by Tony on
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although I think ICS is a very important tool in every fire/ems/rescue scenario, NIMS is a typical big government reactionary cya program. we were caught with our pants down on 9/11 and the powers that be responded with NIMS. I have attended 5 NIMS courses and my take is psuedo-organized chaos. The thought is good but implemtation has been pushed way too fast. After all, ICS has just barely been accepted nationally. We have along way to go .
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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bump...more pertinent than word games
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