David Polikoff's Blog – June 2016 Archive (2)

As incident commanders (IC) we are tasked to run a gambit of incidents. There are some incidents that can cause anxiety, of those 1 in particular can overwhelm IC’s quickly, the mass casualty incident (MCI). These incidents grow quickly and in order to manage it an IC needs quickly wrap his/her hands around it and dole out tasks. Below is a quick action guideline to assist you in with these incidents:

• Quickly scan the incident for hazards to fire and rescue personnel…

There are many things that can impact poorly on an emergency incident: poor communication, disregard of SOP’s, poor tactical decisions and lack of command, just to name a few. I will focus on command. A strong command presence can overcome most issues on an emergency incident. Most think that command starts once a chief officer arrives on the scene; this ideology can prove to be detrimental to a successful outcome on an incident. The fact is, during an emergency, the incident…