Command Functions of the Incident Management System (Emergency management IMS)

The realization of unified, reliable and well coordinated actions in dealing with incidents and emergencies is a fundamental safety concern in a nation. This is because the sole purpose of any government is to ensure sustainable security for its citizens. Indeed, it is due to this reason that the United States of America government enacted the National Incident Management System (NIMS).  The NIMS in purpose serve to establish and define response management procedures and binding protocols so as to ensure a more effective coordination of incident response and emergency preparedness activities at all government levels (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008).  It gives standardized procedures to be applied by the federal, state, localcounty and tribal governments in responding, addressing and containing homeland security threat incidents such as terrorist attacks and natural calamities (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008).

In a bid to ensure consistency in overseeing successful incident response and management, the NIMS established a national incident command unit. This unit is responsible for issuing commands, coordinating response operations and formulating logistics in major homeland security threat incidents. The system also requires for establishment of other command units at the state, local and tribal government levels. Uniformity of operations is realized through training of all incident response personnel on addressing and managing incidents.

This essay is written as a discussion of the provisions of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) in enhancing the American governments response to homeland security threat incidents and emergency preparedness. The paper also talks a look at the major command functions defined in the policy namely Incident Command staff, Command staff and General Staff, roles and responsibilities as well as other components NIMS.

First is a summary on the provisions of the National Incident Management System. The NIMS system was developed in 2003 as a viable response to the homeland security threats posed by natural disasters and terrorists on the American people (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2010). The system is tailored to provide a flexible incident response framework which can be adopted by every American citizen. In particular, the system defines standardized organizational structures for enhancing coordination among the various stakeholders in times of incidents.

In a summary, NIMS consist of four major components namely command and management, preparedness, resource management and communications and information management (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008). Preparedness encompasses the access of the tasks and resources necessary for initiating, sustaining and continuously nurturing capability for mitigating, addressing and managing homeland incidents successfully (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). The realization of these demands is met constant training of incident response professional, acquisition, and certification of equipments and the continual establishing of response procedures and protocols.

The component on command and management is mainly responsible for issuing incident response commands at all levels during the incident (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008). To achieve this, the NIMS dictate for the establishment of an institutional incident command staff units at all jurisdiction levels for ensuring effective coordination of operation commands. These units are also responsible for formulation of command response logistics as well as overseeing the effective financial management in the system.

By resource management, NIMS dictates for ensuring availability andor accessibility of necessary incident response resources at the state government level (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). Just to be noted here is the fact that an effective incident response system should be able to locate and guarantee necessary resources, such as medical services and transport among others. In line with this, NIMS dictates for the free flow of incident response resource across jurisdictions by signing of resource mobilization protocols (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008). This does not only ensure resource availability at will but also enhances cooperation among the various jurisdictions in dealing with homeland security incidents.

Effective communication is quite crucial in dealing with incidents. This therefore calls for unified communications and information provision in a system. In response to this vital rescue and recovery requirement, the NIMS system formed the communications and information management body (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2004). This body is responsible for issuing information on the progress of the response operations. Such a move reduces contradictory information communication both to the response professionals and the general public.

Second is a discussion on the major command functions of NIMS and their roles and responsibilities. The NIMS command and management body is composed of the incident command system, multi-agency coordination system and the public information systems (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008). The incident command system is made up of incident commander, command staff and the general staff all of whom have different responsibilities.

Incident commander(s) is charged with the role of commanding all operations during an incident. This means that they are responsible for issuing the final decisions. Just to be noted is that in major incidents, the incidents commands usually involve many representatives from the various agencies taking part in the response operation. Due to this reason, coupled with the underlying requirement of NIMS to enhance unified coordination of commands, the commands issued by the team of incident commands must not be contradictory (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2010). Therefore, there is need for negotiations among the commanders on the type of effective command to be issued.

However, sometimes there could be many incidents to be responded to. This is why we have the area command approach. According to the provisions of NIMS, multiple-incident situations call for establishment of individual commanders for the independent locations (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). However, it is a common practice to have in place a single incident commander to coordinate commands. This means that the separate incident commanders are only for ensuring an efficient administrative support by issuing commands from the area commander.

Command staff on the other hand entails a safety officer who is responsible for ensuring safety during the rescue and recovery operation (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2004). To execute this, the safety officer serves to monitor the safety situation on the ground so as to engage in establishing strategies for ensuring or even enhancing the security of the response personnel. Another command staff is the public information officer. Unified operations call for unified communication (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008). Therefore, the work of the information officer is to convey information about the incident to all stakeholders, media and the general public.

Still on command staff is the liaison (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008). NIMS seek to ensure enhanced coordination during incident response operation. It is due to this reason that it establishes free inter-jurisdiction flow of required resources. This is the reason why we have the liaison. This command staff serves to communicate with agencies providing support at the incident. Therefore, a liaison ensures that required help is given for overseeing the efficient recovery from an incident.

Another major command function is the general staff. This first has an operations section chief (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2010). This staff member is charged with the duty of ensuring that all what is possible is done to achieve the objectives of the incident. Therefore, operations section chief is responsible for overseeing the effective execution of commands by the agencies at the incident.  The general staff also has a logistics sections chief for ensuring that all resources and assistance necessary at the incident are available.

Another member of the general staff is the planning section chief. Availability of accurate information on incidents is quite vital as it ensures reliability of the decision making process (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008). To ensure this, the planning section chief has the sole responsibility of acquiring and conveying information on the status of the incident as well as determining the incident operation resource available or required.

Still under the general staff is the financial and administration section chief that is responsible in accounting for the incident costs (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). As an administration, this section keeps records of personnel at the incident as well as assessing for need to increase or reduce them depending on the incident situation. The staff is also charged with the duty of contacting logistics of procurement contracts.

Homeland security threat incidents require the involvement of information and intelligence staff. This staff can be created at any level depending on the complexity of the incident or consideration by the incident commander on the needs of the incident. Still, complex incidents require for the division of the command functions into manageable units thus leading to a Multi Agency Coordination approach such as having dual multiple-operations section chiefs as well as multiple-logistics chiefs.

In conclusion, the main purpose of NIMS is to enhance unified and thus more reliable coordination of incident and emergency preparedness operations in America (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008). Through its command functions, the system ensures not only unified commands but also availability of resources. The system is also reflective of the need for conveying incident information both internally and externally as it establishes the public information officer command staff. All these are crucial in ensuring the successful prevention, responding andor recovering from any form of homeland security threat incident.

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