CERT Health Sciences Campus Community Emergency Response Team University of Southern California

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATION

INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM (ICS) Maintain safety of disaster workers. Provide clear leadership and organizational structure. Improve effectiveness of rescue efforts.

ICS Provides: Common terminology that contributes to effective communication and shared understanding. Effective communication among team members. A well-defined management structure. Accountability.

Basic ICS Structure Incident Commander Operations Section Chief Logistics Section Chief Planning Section Chief Administration Section Chief

CERT Command Structure Operations Section Chief Fire Suppression Group Leader Search and Rescue Group Leader Medical Group Leader Fire Suppression Team A Fire Suppression Team B Fire Suppression Team C Staging Area S & R Team A S & R Team B S & R Team C Triage Team Treatment Team Morgue Team

ICS Objectives Identify the scope of the incident Determine an overall strategy Deploy resources Document actions and results

EOC vs. Incident Command Post Pre-defined location (Topping Student Center) Prepared in advance with necessary equipment, communications capabilities, and resources CP: Identified by first responder at time of event. More “portable”, i.e., Ford Explorer, a room adjacent to scene. Designated by the name of the incident. This contrasts the EOC to the ICP, though this may not come up a lot. The Incident Command Post kind of comes back to the Fire model or the Police model. Let’s say there’s some kind of incident happening in Denver and the fire department, paramedics, police show up. They may establish Incident Command at the scene, and that’s usually done at the incident command post. It’s not a building, because it’s generally a temporary structure. Usually they can bring all their equipment with them, everything they need to conduct business. Generally, the person who’s most qualified at the scene becomes the incident commander. If it’s mostly a fire issue, it may be the fire chief; if it’s more of a criminal investigation, it could be the chief of police. EOC, on the other hand, is usually pre-defined location. It’s usually heavily invested to have all that communication equipment and it’s not necessarily designed to be portable. There are usually more than one EOCs in the area. In Denver there are two: there’s on in the City and County Building, and there’s another one in case something happens to that building. What happened in New York during 9/11? Unfortunately, the primary EOC for New York City was in the World Trade Center complex. They lost that at the one time they needed it the most. Fortunately, they were able to very quickly recreate--off of a pier--an EOC. They did that within 24 hours, an amazing feat. You can see pictures of how large is and how many agencies were there. If you can imagine a long pier that an ocean liner would be able to pull up next to, that was basically it. It was lined with communications and computer equipment, and that was all created within 24 hours. So every agency needs to identify an EOP, and most of you may know where that is. The ICP, on the other hand, might not be something that public health, per say, may use. But perhaps you may have to go to a hospital in order to do a disease investigation. You might have to create an ICP in that hospital which is then in touch with the EOC of your public health department. That would be the same as the fire chief establishing an ICP at Mile High Stadium and yet being in touch with the EOC at the City and County Building.

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