ICS and Communications

By Chief Brian Wilbur, Ithaca Fire Department
PIO – NYSAFC Communications Committee

We often talk about ICS, and we often talk about communications, but how often do we talk about ICS and communications in the same sentence? Not so much. Why is it that one of the primary functions of ICS is to enhance communications, but we don’t proactively plan our communications to facilitate a successful incident command system to manage incidents of even modest complexity?

Throw in a complex incident, such as a multi-agency incident requiring unified command, and the situation gets more complicated. Do our law enforcement colleagues see incident command the same way the fire service does?

To answer that question, consider these recommendations from documents developed by law enforcement for those most critical and complex situations, the active shooter. The following is from the International Association of Chiefs of Police Guide to Preventing and Responding to School Violence, downloaded on February 18, 2013, from Lessons Learned Information Sharing (LLIS.gov) at  www.llis.gov:

The Role of Law Enforcement: Law enforcement participation is necessary to develop and implement well-coordinated and effective responses to crisis situations.

1. Respond to all reports of criminal activities in the school. Rapid response teams should be formed to help ensure immediate intervention in all emergency situations.
2. Exercise appropriate rules of engagement when immediate intervention is needed, keeping in mind the safety of victims, bystanders, and first responders.
3. Establish and adhere to direction from the incident command system. (emphasis supplied)
4. Establish appropriate security and response perimeters. Provide traffic control assistance to enable emergency services to get through to the school.
5. Develop lines of communication with affected schools’ administrations and district emergency operation centers or command posts.
6. Protect relevant evidence from contamination. Follow approved collection procedures to facilitate effective prosecution of perpetrators.
7. Help parents and/or guardians find their children.
8. Be prepared to assist with many unforeseeable duties.

From the Active Shooter Presentation by the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, downloaded on February 18, 2013, from www.llis.gov:

Arrival on the Scene:

• Establish incident command. (emphasis supplied)
• First arriving deputy is in charge (unless scene commander has been designated).
• Incident command located in a safe place with the largest field of view, but may change with suspect movement.
• Go to side channel when enough people have arrived on scene. Direct arriving units for perimeter, search teams, etc.
• Direct escaping/released victims to a safe location, (away from parked cars), for debrief. Suspect(s) may be among victims. Sweep victim safe area for IEDs and if possible victims should have an officer assigned for security.

These are just two examples of many references to law enforcement use of the incident command system. It appears that law enforcement is on board with ICS, and encourages the use of the incident command system. Are you on board with them?

The use of ICS is critical to the incidents we deal with every day. The structure it provides for communications is irrefutable. If so, why don’t we all embrace it from the outset? Could it be that we still don’t understand how to fully employ ICS in our bread and butter incidents?

ICS is about managing span of control and communicating on the incident scene. You may recall that ideal span of control is 1:4-6 or so. Industry refers to span of control as direct reports. As an incident commander, how many direct reports can you realistically manage, and how do you structure the ICS so that the number of direct reports remains manageable?

Communications! As the incident commander, as long as you get the water you need, is it important that you hear all the radio traffic between tankers and fill and dump sites? No! If you aren’t getting the water you need, do you want to hear from each individual unit in the shuttle to find out why? No! You want to hear from one person, the water supply officer.

More importantly, do you need to hear from every firefighter on the incident scene to assess how things are going, or do you need to hear from the fireground operations section chief? How does this fit with your idea of a manageable span of control?

If you are able to maintain a single command channel, and subdivide your incident scene into several tactical talk groups, does that help or hinder your efforts? If you can arrange for your interior operations to function on a single talk group so that you can focus on hearing whatever they may say on the radio, is that of value? Of course it is!

Last but not least, for this installment, please consider NFPA 1561: Standard on Emergency Services Incident Management System (2008 Ed.). Chapter 6, "Communications and Information Management," calls for your communications system to provide one dispatch radio channel and a separate tactical radio channel for initial use at the incident. Further, when a division or group is implemented, the radio system must have capacity to provide a dispatch radio channel, a command radio channel, and a tactical radio channel. Why? Span of control, the ability to subdivide the incident, and the ability to monitor and hear the communications from personnel engaged in hazardous locations, such as an IDLH atmosphere in a building on fire. For those of you that do not remember the Hackensack, N.J. Ford dealership fire, it would be worth your time to look it up. It is relevant to this discussion.