NIMS and How to Use It

     "To prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies, the United States Government shall establish a single, comprehensive approach to domestic incident management."
-Homeland Security Presidential
Directive 5, February 28, 2003

It's been more than three years since President George W. Bush issued the above mandate, and the National Incident Management System (NIMS) that resulted from it is now a fact of life. But how much do you really know about NIMS and your responsibilities under it? Can you answer a few quick questions?

1. Who has to take NIMS and Incident Command System training?
2. What does full NIMS implementation and compliance entail?
3. Should unpaid volunteers and CERT members be included in NIMS training?

     If the answers to these questions don't roll right off your tongue, you're not alone. The above inquiries are among the Frequently Asked Questions listed on FEMA's main NIMS website (www.fema.gov/nims).

     The short answers, before we go farther, are:

1. All federal, state, local, tribal, private-sector and nongovernmental personnel with direct roles in emergency management and response. This includes EMS, hospital and public-health providers.
2. To achieve full implementation/compliance, states and territories must complete a range of activities for fiscal years 2005 and 2006 detailed in the state/territory compliance matrix on the NIMS compliance page (www.fema.gov/emergency/nims/index.shtm). A separate matrix lays out requirements for local and tribal governments.
        Meeting these requirements is important, by the way: Starting October 1, all federal preparedness funding will hinge on full NIMS compliance.
3. Yes. Anyone with a direct role in emergency management or response, including volunteers, must receive NIMS and ICS training appropriate to their role.

     With October 1 approaching, efforts are underway nationally to get up to speed, but a lot of people, even after taking the requisite training, still seem to be at a bit of a loss about it all.

     "People are searching for guidance on this," says Chicago Fire Department EMS chief Don Walsh, PhD, EMT-P. "They're being told, 'Go take the IS-700 course (FEMA's introduction to NIMS), and you'll be certified.' But people are taking it and asking, 'How does that fit to my department?'"

     Walsh and a team of public-safety/emergency-response heavyweights set out to answer that question with a textbook, National Incident Management System: Principles and Practice, published last year by Jones and Bartlett. The book-which counts among its authors such luminaries in the field as Hank Christen, Geoffrey Miller, Christian Callsen, Frank Cilluffo and Paul Maniscalco-has already been adopted as several states' NIMS training manual.

     "We tried to take the federal documents and make them a little easier and more manageable to work with," says Walsh. "We took a principles and practice approach and made it fit the individual agency."

     Jones and Bartlett offers the book as part of a full NIMS compliance package that also includes 20 accompanying student books and an instructor's CD-ROM containing lecture outlines and PowerPoint presentations. For more, see www.jbpub.com.

     A more portable NIMS reference is offered by Informed Publishing, which produces an array of easy-to-reference pocket field guides for emergency responders. The company's NIMS Incident Command System Field Guide was published earlier this year.

     "Toward the end of last year," says Richard Bilger, the company's director of sales and marketing, "probably four out of five customers calling us were asking, 'Do you have anything on NIMS? We have no tools; there's nothing out here.' And our field guide format is so popular in our industry that we decided to create one."

     The guide covers such areas as the components of NIMS, ICS concepts, and incident operations, planning, logistics and finance. It is available from www.informedguides.com.

FEMA, IAFC Launch Fire Service Mutual Aid Project
FEMA's NIMS Integration Center is working with the International Association of Fire Chiefs to develop a national intrastate mutual-aid system for the fire service that will tie local districts and departments into larger statewide networks and facilitate implementation of NIMS.
"No one jurisdiction or local fire district will ever have all the resources they need for the range of possible emergencies to which they may have to respond," IAFC Executive Director Garry Briese added. "Effective mutual aid agreements can help fill the resource gaps a jurisdiction may have."
The effort will initially focus on 10 pilot states, five in the deep south/Gulf Coast area (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas) and five in the Rocky Mountain west (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming). In each of these states, teams of technical experts will steer planning efforts, work with system organizers and advocate for the integration of NIMS and mutual aid concepts (like resource typing and inventorying) into state plans. These efforts will culminate with formal written plans and recommended steps for better implementation/integration of NIMS concepts into the fire service. For more information, e-mail Hyatt Simpson at hsimpson@iafc.org.