Know How Government Communicates in a Disaster? Incident Command System

LINKS. All over the United States, government agencies use FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Incident Command System (ICS).

Located within the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is responsible for coordinating the federal government’s response to natural and manmade disasters. … The federal government has provided disaster relief in one form or another since the early 19th century.

ICS consists of a standard management hierarchy and procedures for managing temporary incident(s) of any size. ICS procedures should be pre-established and sanctioned by participating authorities, and personnel should be well-trained prior to an incident.^[5]

The ICS concept was formed in 1968 at a meeting of Fire Chiefs in Southern California. The program was built primarily to take after the management hierarchy of the US Navy and it was mainly for fire fighting of wildfires in California. During the 1970s, ICS was fully developed during massive wildfire suppression efforts in California (FIRESCOPE) that followed a series of catastrophic wildfires, starting with the massive Laguna fire in 1970. Property damage ran into the millions, and many people died or were injured.

ICS Outline for ICS 100 and ICS 700

An Introduction to the Incident Command System, ICS 100

An Introduction to the National Incident Management System, ICS 700