Efficiency of an Incident Command System - Essay Example

What is an incident? Incidents are occurrences that may be created by human intervention or natural phenomenon that requires immediate attention and action by emergency response agencies. Wide-scale incidents and emergencies may be categorized under these levels: 1. Fire incidents both structural and wildfire that has a wide coverage in terms of area, 2. Hazardous materials exposure incidents that can directly affect human, animals and the environment including oil and chemical spills, 3. Search and rescue operations that involves fire, earthquakes, typhoons and other natural calamities, 4. Terrorist and mass destruction events that requires medical and emergency personnel attendance, 5. Planned events that will involved a huge number of crowd or spectators like parades, concerts, elections and more (Radvanvsky, 2006). The primary importance of having an effective command system is the warning system and its organizational components. An effective command system would incorporate the community, several government and private organizations and media to effectively disseminate warning messages to the public and other nearby communities. Having relevant and important information about the incident, the public, government and private organizations, as well as, the experts or support team can now make countermeasures to respond accordingly to the situation of the incident (Amendola, et.al., 1995). It is important to have a very effective incident command system to primarily evaluate the risk of the situation and relay information as fast as possible. The processes and procedures must also be structured in a way that it may counter fit any possible situation of incidents and emergencies depending on the nature of the facility and its surroundings. A standard organizational structure in managing incidents, regardless the cause, location and reason, is essential for public safety and incident control measures. There are a lot of factors that needs to be considered in order to develop and to implement an incident command system. Mobilization capabilities, effectively utilizing external resources, involvement of emergency responders are just a few to mention. Coordination and communication between government and public agencies, as well as, private organizations and the surrounding communities and other NGOs is also essential for incident and risk management. Every organization involved has information that may be useful to control or resolve the incident (Radvanvsky, 2006). Wide-scale incidents may also result to great loss in assets. The incident command plays a big role in finding onsite resources to control and to resolve the matter, decreasing loss, casualties and injuries. Since wide-scale incidents also affect nearby communities, it is important that an effective incident command system is used to secure and manage the situation preventing the incident to cause more loss in terms of properties and lives. An effective incident command system can be efficient in handling situations like this. In cases of wide-scale incidents like release of hazardous chemicals, fire and other emergency situations that involves a great amount of space in terms of coverage, the lesser the command levels the better. Having up to three levels of command will make the job faster. With this, the relay of the information needed to control and to resolve the matter would be communicated faster. Strategic changes in the response or interaction will be more accurate. In addition to that, this strategy avoids secondhand information to be passed on which may cause confusion. The incident command center or the strategic command center would have all the experts working together to analyze and to evaluate the situation. These experts would involve safety experts, doctors, engineers and any other expert needed for the situation. The team of experts will carefully evaluate and monitor the situation depending on any information they can get from the onsite workers external and other sources. The middle command or the tactical command is a team of experts who supervises the incident’s situation onsite. Depending on the directive they get from the strategic command, they analyze the current situation onsite in order to control and to resolve the incident. And finally the onsite task teams are a group of teams who are designated to do various processes to control the incident. They are grouped to perform specific tasks. These groups are normally divided in divisions, like ventilation, search and rescue, extinguishment and overhaul (Gagliano, et.al., 2008). However, in some incident situations, joint planning is necessary especially if the incident involves private infrastructures and facilities. Joint planning in large-scale incidents is a must to immediately resolve the issue. Coordination from the private sectors in terms of resources needed or used to control the situation, and information about the facility, like blue prints and alternate access will be very helpful. Private organizations would also have their own command system or emergency protocol. This is for the purpose of controlling or resolving the incident at first hand until the experts on the matter arrive. Proper coordination between both private and incident command strategists is an asset and essential to resolve the matter. The private team will always have the first-hand information and they must relay it accurately to the incident command to create effective and efficient ways to resolve the incident or matter (Critical Incident Protocol 2000). In order to have a better understanding and risk assessment, various information will be needed. First information that has to be acquired is the infrastructure or plant design. This is to analyze the damaged areas, possible damaged areas and areas that can still be saved from damage. Second is the nature of the business or environment, whether chemicals, hazardous substances and other flammable materials are on site that may cause the incident to get worse. Third is the number of injured or casualties of the incident. These are the people who were directly involved when the incident happened. Fourth are the surrounding communities near the incident. This is to determine if the location of the incident is at a center of a business district, industrial, commercial or residential. Having of all these data or information simultaneously has a great bearing for the resolution of the wide-scale incident or emergency situation. Given all of this information, we can now start the risk assessment. First action that needs to be taken is to identify how and why the incident happened. The information gathered as to what the cause of the incident was will also be a great reference in future developments for safety procedures that would reduce the risk rate for incidents. Since the fire has already engulfed a number of tanks, we must now find out how much more oil tanks can be saved. Then a headcount of the number of the employees that are deployed in the nearby areas at the time when the incident happened should be obtained. With this we can also determine if there are still employees nearby or trapped in the said incident area. Because large plume of smoke was emitted from the incident, nearby residents must be evacuated. We would now have to determine possible evacuation routes that will not have an effect on main streets that will be used for the support vehicles like fire trucks, ambulance, security and other vehicles that may be useful on the incident. The risk assessment should always be based on a verifiable manner. Risk management is also defined as incident scene management. Its purpose is to reduce the risk of loss, casualties or injuries and other circumstances that may affect the health of people involved in the emergency or incident and other nearby community activities and operations (Gagliano, et.al., 2008). In a wide-scale incident, it is natural that public agencies must be involved and coordinated for the management of the incident. Local, state and federal public agencies are there to help provide information and assistance in cases of incidents and emergencies. The local firefighters and its command should be coordinating with the facility involved in the incident to control the situation and prevent further damage and injuries during the process of the incident. The DOH or department of health should be in charge of assisting injured employees and community residents in the event, and make sure that certain health precautions and preventive measures are implemented in terms of health-related issues. In every community, there are residents that would have certain health issues and conditions that the incident might complicate. That is why health experts like doctors, nurses and more must work and coordinate for the welfare and health of the employees and people involved in the incident. The police and traffic forces should ensure that the evacuation is done in an orderly manner, and maintain peace to avoid further panicking during the evacuation process. They should also make sure that the routes for the evacuation and the routes for the support groups for the incident are accessible to avoid delays in both evacuating and incident control operations. Social services agencies should also provide assistance in terms of making sure that the evacuees are provided with food, water, medication and possibly clothing. Financial assistance should also be taken into consideration. These evacuees might not have the capability to go to work or even work properly due to the traumatic experience from the incident. Environmental and public agencies must also take action during and after the incident. They have to make sure that the atmosphere and environment is fit for everyday living. Chemicals and hazardous substances might have been released, polluting the air and making it not fit or suitable for health reasons, which in turn may cause illness and disease in the long run. Effective liaison is a must in an incident command system for wide-scale incidents. The liaison officer is the one in charge of coordinating all the concerned departments and agencies, the liaison officer is also the one responsible in providing information to the media which will be used for public awareness. The liaison officer is the contact point of every agency government or private, other expert teams and the media. The liaison officer’s role is essential for monitoring and analyzing possible inter-organizational problems in incident or emergency operations (Molino, 2006). Since emergencies and wide-scale incidents are situations that the public needs to know, the fastest organization that can do the job of letting the public know is the media. This is also part of the risk management strategy. One of the benefits that media can do for the public is to let them know the situation of the incident. With this, the public will be aware of what is happening. Thus, they can plan accordingly like looking for alternate routes to work or any place they plan to go which will pass by the location of the incident. In addition to that, the control of traffic may also be manageable. Road blocks are part of the standard operation procedures in emergencies and wide-scale incidents. If the public is not aware of which roads are blocked, travelers and motorists might just get in the way of the evacuation and incident control operations. Coverage of wide-scale incidents are often delivered by the media focusing on the risk and possible outcome and other alarming situations the public might encounter as a result of the incident. This is basically public information, to let the people know what they have to expect in this kind of situations. Media communicates with a liaison from the incident command to gather information about the situation and development of the incident control. Any information they get from the liaison in the incident command is what they air. Media has the option to participate strongly in such issues especially for the benefit of public awareness. They may participate in the discussion of political leaders and public agency leaders that are directly concerned and involved in the resolution of the emergency or incident. They may focus their coverage in the discussion of the nature of risk the incident may bring, the slightest positive outcome and the small and major consequences that it may result to, alternatives that may be done or used to safe keep the public and to avoid more risk and possible accidents during the process of the incident control, or points of view by the public and other private organizations and professional and experts about the situation of the incident. They may also comment on what they think the public and incident command may do to control the situation. And lastly, the media can also focus on the possible action plan of the strategic team in the incident command to minimize risk and to resolve the incident (Lundgren, et.al., 2009). A good incident command system can only be efficient if all the information and data needed or essential for the incident management and risk assessment is available. For instance, if the plant that is under the process of an incident control has a neighboring plant that is involved in the production of chemicals that can be hazardous and dangerous for human and the environment, information about the plant and its design must also be obtained by the incident command team to create and to structure an action plan that will control the incident avoiding it to spread out the neighboring plant. Sometimes, the only way to let the public know about the risk of this situation is through media. The public may not only receive information, they can also influence and help in the decision-making of the incident command (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2003). Without evidence and data, it is impossible to predict confidently how to communicate about the risk that the incident may create or result to. This is why media can be a very helpful tool to deliver data on the time through live coverage and simultaneous updates to the public and the concerning public agencies and private organizations involved in the matter (Lundgen, 2009). The importance of having an effective incident command system is essential for risk prevention and safety measures. Without having an incident command system, it is obvious that there would be confusion in times when wide-scale incidents happen. Community trainings and other inter-public agencies training should be conducted to make its employees and respondents, as well as, the community equipped and have an understanding on what to do in cases of emergencies and wide scale incidents. Both private and government organizations, as well as, the citizens and people of the community must know where to call and to coordinate with if an emergency or incident occurs. This should be a protocol for public participation and must be included in the structure of an incident command system. Information is an asset to effectively accomplish the objective of an incident command system. This is why one of the protocols of risk and safety management is proper coordination and relaying of information throughout the incident control process. The effectivity and efficiency of an incident command system depends on the structure and planning in accordance to emergency situations. There should be a specific protocol to be followed for emergency situations but there should also be a general procedure to be followed. This is to ensure that even if there are rare emergencies or incidents, there is still a structure on how to deal with it. References Amendola, A. et.al. (1995). Natural risk and civil protection. USA:Taylor & Francis. Gagliano, M. et.al. (2008). Air management for the fire service. USA:Fire Engineering Books. Lundgren, R. et.al. (2009). Risk communication: a handbook for communicating environmental, safety and health risks. USA: Wiley-IEEE Molino, L. (2006). Emergency incident management systems: fundamentals and applications, 4th ed. USA:John Wiley & Sons. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2003). OECD guiding principles for chemical accident prevention, preparedness and response: guidance for industry (including management and labour), public authorities, communities and other stakeholders. USA:OECD Publishing. Radvonsky, R. (2006). Critical infrastructure: homeland security and emergency preparedness. USA:CRC Press. n.a. (2000). Critical incident protocol. USA:Diane Publishing. Read More