CRITICAL INCIDENT MANAGEMENT Critical Incident Management



Critical Incident Management

The events of 9/11, numerous western wildfires, and other natural disasters (particularly earthquakes and hurricanes) have clearly demonstrated that no jurisdiction has sufficient emergency services to handle large-scale emergencies within their own resources. Even “small” emergencies frequently involve multiple departments from within either a single jurisdiction or assistance from adjacent mutual aid departments. The fire service (also the early leaders in the concept of mutual aid) was the first emergency response profession to recognize the need for a national standard for emergency incident management (C3I).

Ted Goldfarb, contends that the concept of ICS within the fire services goes back at least 150 years, using a Currier & Ives lithograph of a mid-19th century fire ground to make his point (Goldfarb, 1997). “Following the devastating 1970 brushfire season in Southern California, a consortium of local, state, and federal fire agencies developed the Incident Command System ['ICS']” (Cardwell, 2000). The consortium, Firescope, has become the de facto American national standard making body, with the active support of the National Fire Protection Association. Law enforcement agencies, who are much less likely than the fire services to be involved as the incident command for large-scale incidents, were slow to adopt the ICS concept. For law enforcement, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics served as the first major implementation of the ICS in a law enforcementled environment. Over the years the Firescope ICS was adopted by all state and most local emergency response agencies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, all federal agencies with wildfire response requirements, and even the U.S. Coast Guard. California and New York were among the first states to mandate its use by state law (Cardwell, 2000). Mutual Aid Although there had long been a general awareness that emergencies could easily overcome the internal resources of ...