Below: the incident management structure has now "expanded" to accommodate the requirements of a larger incident.

(This will be discussed further in Section 3.0)

… the Past ...

The usual emergency response agencies,

• police
• fire
• ambulance

Each did "their own thing" when responding to an emergency incident.   A UNIFIED response was seldom a formal, planned action.

Pre-planning with each agency was not common.

Budgets often came from different sources and the purchasing officers would not be communicating with other organizations outside of their own.  Therefore, many common denominators were overlooked. Some of these were;

• common training needs
• common equipment needs
• common communication systems
• common terminology
  
• who is accountable / responsible for what
  
• no formal objectives set
• no formal incident management structure
• assumptions made
• no task designation or overlapping designation

The primary goal in dealing with the emergency may also have been quite different for each responding agency.

An example of this could be if a forest fire crew responded to a brush fire where there was a house already burning, the crew would focus on the forest. 

If a structural fire crew (Volunteer Fire Department) arrived, they would focus on the home.

If the police arrived they may focus on crowd or traffic control.

Possibly no one was coordinating all current actions and future common needs. It is possible that no one was considering the livestock evacuation needs.  Who is taking care of the electrical power concerns?  ... and on it may go ...

Possibly no one was considering where do the people evacuate to and who looks after them?

... and how are all the different agencies communicating with each other??

With limited human power and resources, an overlap, or gaps in the needs of dealing with the incident may occur - often with costly or tragic results.

All of the different agencies usually had no plan or method in place to integrate each others' requirements or supportive capabilities.

Example:  Structural fire departments - many of whom are smaller, rural departments - connect their fire hoses with threaded fittings.

Many forest fire fighting agencies have a different type of connection called an "instant coupler". 

Instant coupler and threaded fittings will NEVER connect. (it will not matter how many rolls of duct tape you may have!)

Interagency Cross-Training

More recently there has been a lot of interagency cross-training between forest fire agencies and fire departments and now it will be safe to say that close to 100% of the fire departments carry connection adapters so instant couplers and threaded fittings can be connected.  This one change is huge when mutual fire fighting aid is being offered.

 … the Past … In Summary

• poor communication
• terminology
  
• no interagency training
• poor planning
• inefficient resource use
• gaps in responsibility and accountiblity
• equipment compatibility

Critical Point in History

1970 - California - Huge losses

• 16 lives
• 700 structures burned
• half a million acres burned
• $18 million dollars per day

... and now adding to the above issues - there is far more cross state / county / province and even country mutual aid being given. 

Solutions

Governments and individuals realized something had to be done.  Each agency did their very best but the issues as noted above had to be dealt with and changed.  Several agencies in the U.S.A. collaborated on all the many concerns in an attempt to make changes to improve overall emergency response actions.  These changes did not occur overnight but a system was created that seemed to work - and is still working today - over forty years later.

Incident Command System (ICS)

Every incident shall have the above five functions.

The Incident Commander in the above diagram, has four positions or functions subordinate to him/her.  Therefore the Span-of-Control is four. (we will discuss Span-of-Control in more detail later)

Standardizing the command system structure and terminology;

• allows for a more safe and effective use of resources
• personnel are trained to "speak" and understand the same phraseology
• provides for more effective communications
• everyone understands the ICS protocol with the system

All the above points are especially important in situations where there are different languages, cultural and mulit-jusitictional circumstances.