NIMS-ICS-UC-IAP-ACP: Acronyms For Safe Events
Sound complicated? Many people immediately turn off when faced with a blizzard of confusing letters all indicating…well, something. But a festival organization should recognize these terms. They represent an efficient and organized method, a structure, which can help provide a safe and secure experience for guests, staff, and performers.
At a major event in 2014, the Bureau of Land Management noted a public safety incident at an outdoor event hosting 60,000 people. At one point, in response to an unfortunate fatality caused by an auto accident, emergency responders from the BLM, the event medical team, and the local hospital ended up in a heated argument while gathered around the body. Why? Because they could not agree who was in charge!
This confusion was attributed to a missing element called ICS/UC: Incident Command System/Unified Command.
What is the Incident Command System?
ICS is part of a larger emergency response protocol called NIMS: The National Interagency Incident Management System. Don’t think because it is “National” that it only applies to major disasters. A great advantage of this system is that it is scalable from small incidents at a concert in the park to an event hosting 100,000 or more for days.
ICS is a standardized incident management concept designed to allow responders to use a basic organizational structure relative to the incident demands without being hindered by jurisdictional boundaries.
In the 1970s, ICS was developed in response to catastrophic wildfires in California which caused fatalities, many injuries, and millions in property loss. ICS addresses the following problems:
- Too many people reporting to one supervisor
- Different emergency response organizational structures
- Lack of reliable incident information
- Inadequate and incompatible communications
- Lack of structure for coordinated planning among agencies
- Unclear lines of authority
- Terminology differences among agencies
- Unclear or unspecified incident objectives
In 1980, federal officials transitioned ICS into NIMS, which became the basis of the response management system for all federal agencies with wildfire management responsibilities. Since then, many federal agencies have endorsed the use of ICS, and several have mandated its use.
An ICS enables integrated communication and planning by establishing a span of control. An ICS divides emergency response into five functions essential for operations: Command, Operations, Planning, Logistics, Finance, and Administration. This is a typical ICS structure:
This may resemble your event organization chart. Many of the duties of the typical production staff are broken out this way. You can replace “Incident Commander” with “Production Manager”. By aligning your staff responsibilities with ICS you will be ready to coordinate in an identifiable way with local responders at the community, county, state or even the Federal Level.
How does ICS work?
By defining the duties and responsibilities of the staff, ICS enables a clear chain of command.
The Incident Commander (IC) or the Unified Command (UC) is responsible for all aspects of the response, including developing incident response and managing operations. The IC is faced with many responsibilities. Unless assigned to another member of the Command or General Staffs, these responsibilities remain with the IC. Some of Incident Command responsibilities include:
- Establish immediate priorities for the safety of responders, other emergency workers, bystanders, and people involved in the incident.
- Stabilize the incident by ensuring life safety and managing resources efficiently.
- Determine incident objectives and strategy to achieve the objectives.
- Establish and monitor incident organization.
- Approve the implementation of the written Incident Action Plan (IAP).
- Ensure adequate health and safety measures are in place.
Command Staff
- The Information Officer develops and releases information about the incident to the news media, incident personnel, and other appropriate agencies.
- The Liaison Officer is the point of contact for coordinating activities between the IC/UC and various agencies and groups. This may include local government officials, and criminal investigating organizations arriving on the scene.
- The Safety Officer develops and recommends measures for assuring personnel health and safety and to assess and anticipate hazardous situations. The Safety Officer also develops the Site Safety Plan, reviews the Incident Action Plan for safety implications, and provides a timely, complete, specific, and accurate assessment of hazards and required controls.
Section Chiefs
The Section Chiefs includes Operations, Planning, Logistics, and Finance/Administrative. These responsibilities may remain with the Incident Command until they are assigned to another individual. When the Operations, Planning, Logistics or Finance/Administrative responsibilities are established as separate functions under the IC, they are managed by a section chief and can be supported by other functional units.
- The Operations staff is responsible for all operations directly applicable to the primary mission of incident response.
- The Planning staff is responsible for collecting, evaluating, and disseminating the tactical information related to incidents, and for preparing and documenting the Incident Action Plans (IAP’s).
- The Logistics staff is responsible for providing facilities, services, and materials for incident response.
- The Finance and Administrative staff is responsible for all financial, administrative, and cost analysis of the incident response.
Command Staff and Section Chief responsibilities
- Provide response direction
- Coordinate effective communication
- Coordinate resources
- Establish incident priorities
- Develop mutually agreed-upon incident objectives and approve response strategies
- Assign objectives to the response structure
- Review and approve IAP’s
- Ensure integration of response organizations into the ICS/UC
- Establish protocols
- Ensure worker and public health and safety
- Inform the media
From this basic structure each Section Chief can have reporting Directors, Supervisors, and Branches, depending on the scope of the incident and the division of specific responsibilities.
ICS is Scalable
This modular organization allows responders to scale their efforts and apply the parts of the ICS structure that best meet the demands of the incident. In other words, there are no hard and fast rules for when or how to expand the ICS organization. Many incidents will never require the activation of Planning, Logistics, or Finance/Administration sections while others will require some or all of them to be established. A major advantage of the ICS organization is the ability to fill only those parts of the organization that is required. For some incidents, and in some applications, only a few of the functional elements may be required. However, if there is a need to expand the organization, additional positions exist within the ICS framework to meet virtually any need.
For example, in responses involving responders from a single jurisdiction, the ICS establishes an organization for comprehensive response management. However, when an incident involves more than one agency or jurisdiction, responders can expand the ICS framework to address a multi-jurisdictional incident.
The roles of the ICS participants also vary depending on the incident. Staffing considerations are based on the needs of the incident. The number of personnel and the organization structure are variables. There is no absolute standard to follow. However, large-scale incidents will usually require that each component, or section, is set up separately with different staff members managing each section. A basic operating guideline is that the Incident Commander is responsible for all activities until command authority is transferred to another person.
Build the ICS in advance for events
For festivals and events, the ICS is defined in advance as part of the overall Emergency Action Plan (EAP). The key production positions are assigned in advance and aligned with local responders in a unified ICS. This establishes clear lines of communication between production and local agencies prior to incident response. This prevents the types confusion note in the fatality incident above. (Note that for the subsequent anual event, the BLM marked this issue as resolved)
Through advance collaboration between the Planning Section and all responsible parties, a set of Incident Action Plans (IAP’s) can be developed to address the different incident responses and levels of recourses required. These IAP’s are an essential element of the overall event EAP. The IAP’s developed by the Planning Section are submitted to the Incident Commander for approval. In this manner, the Emergency Action Plan brings together everyone’s input and identifies critical shortfalls that need to be addressed to carry out the plan.
Learning from FEMA
This is only a very basic introduction to National Incident Management System and how it can relate to special events. Fortunately, FEMA has created an excellent series of online courses for ICS and NIMS. These free courses only take a few hours to complete and can result in a certificate of completion. The courses can be found here:
ICS: http://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-100.b
NIMS: https://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-700.a
Also, FEMA has published a useful Special Events Contingency Planning Job Aids Manual. It is available here:
http://www.training.fema.gov/emiweb/downloads/is15aspecialeventsplanning-jamanual.pdf
A course related to this manual can be found here:
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