Key Essentials For The First-Arriving Incident Commander

As a company officer, the day will come where you and your crew are first to arrive at what looks like the beginning of a major incident. Your Battalion Chief (BC) is delayed or diverted to other incidents, so YOU are the Incident Commander (IC). How you set the table for this incident with regard to quickly setting up the Incident Command System (ICS) is critical. And how you use your channels of communication, including the ways you communicate, will be crucial to your success.

Before we jump into the ‘how-to’, let’s examine something that looms over everything we do during emergencies, especially fires - ‘The NIOSH 5’. I first became aware of the NIOSH 5, when listening to one of Anthony Kastros’ lectures on incident command and the need for an organization on the fire ground.

‘The NIOSH 5’

Firefighters and emergency workers typically get lost, hurt, or killed at incidents, when any one of five causal factors identified by The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) are present:

• Improper risk assessment
• Lack of incident command
• Lack of accountability
• Inadequate communications
• Lack of SOPs (or failure to follow established SOPs)

Statistically, 50 percent of these line-of-duty deaths (LODDs) and injury events occur in the first 15 minutes of an incident. Half of those occur in the first three minutes! If you’re the initial IC, it’s statistically likely this could happen while you’re in charge.

Need for training and practice in handling emergencies

Keeping ‘The NIOSH 5’ at the forefront of your mind should trigger the need for training and practice in handling emergencies. Although there are factors you simply can’t control during an emergency, you can control communications, incident command, accountability, repetitive training, and standardization.

The following are some things to keep in mind while managing an incident:

• Arrival on Scene

In incident management, setup is everything and oftentimes, determines the outcome of the incident. To use a sports analogy, you definitely want your first pitch to be a strike. So how do you do that?

Provide a Solid Size-up

Clear and concise on-scene conditions reports set the tone for any incident and establish solid communications

The first step is taking a deep breath and giving a good size-up. Clear and concise on-scene conditions reports set the tone for any incident and establish solid communications, and a command tone. Your tone and tempo in your size-up will help focus everyone and create a tactics-driven incident, rather than an emotions-driven one. But, if we’re being honest, being cool takes practice and repetition.

Your agency should have a standardized way for how and when this size-up is delivered. In many cases, it’s a fill-in-the-blank script that includes the following four things:

• What you see (smoke and flames/or nothing showing)
• The area you see it affecting (the second story, the alpha/bravo corner)
• What’s happening/what’s on fire or causing the hazard (a two-story home or a sedan next to a building)
• Establishing command (a must-take command or pass, if you’re going to rescue a citizen)

By practicing within your agency’s standards, it enables you to project a cool tone over the radio like you’ve ‘been there before.

• Order resources early and often

Tunnel vision is a death sentence for any IC. In most cases, this is not the time to get sucked into task-level problems. The exceptions to this are structure fires and other emergencies where there is an immediate and known rescue. Otherwise, it’s time to step back, take in the big picture, and make decisions as an IC.

Ask yourself: ‘What will this incident do in five minutes? 10? 20? One hour?’ If the answer is ‘get bigger’, then you need more resources. Order them early and often, because they can always be turned around. Don’t try to do too much with too little.

• Trusted Incident Command System equals early accountability

As the initial IC, you’ll be sending crews into the hazard zone. It’s a red flag if, during the initial portion of the incident, you don’t have solid accountability. It’s during this initial ‘fog of war’ that we lose track of crews, and it’s when personnel gets hurt or killed.

NFPA 1561, along with other best practices, requires that you know where everyone is and what they’re doing. If you don’t have that knowledge, stop and figure that out, or assign someone to figure it out and report back to you as soon as possible.

Benefits of an all-in-one digital platform - Tablet Command

Many agencies require the first-arriving officer to implement some form of an ICS to track crew

Many agencies require the first-arriving officer to implement some form of an ICS to track crews – a notepad, whiteboard, tactical worksheet, or better yet, a digital command board.

The huge advantage of an all-in-one digital platform like Tablet Command is that it’s CAD-integrated and will populate resources for you in real-time. There’s no writing and scribbling while listening to garbled radio traffic, and no trying to ‘catch up’ with resource orders that change on the fly.

Accountability integrated into command processes

With a platform, such as Tablet Command, all you’re doing is dragging and dropping resources into their assignments, which automatically time-stamps their activities. Maintaining accountability becomes seamlessly integrated into your command processes. These digital platforms also tend to be highly recognizable and easy for others to assume command.

It’s paramount that you train extensively on whatever system your agency uses, and that everyone in your region or agency is squared away on how to maintain accountability in a standardized fashion. It’s a problem if you have several chiefs and company officers, and too many (or not enough) ways of maintaining accountability.

Many agencies need the first-arriving officer to implement an ICS to track crews

Segment and subdivide

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Use your knowledge of your ICS to break up the incident into manageable bites. When the Fire Chief arrives, they’ll have simple questions: Where is everybody? What are they doing? How are they doing? How do I talk to them? Knowing where your people need to deploy and what channel they’re on are critical to accountability. Using the command board is a great way to have all of those questions answered.

Using divisions, groups, or sectors can make your life easier in this regard, especially as an incident grows rapidly

Using divisions, groups, or sectors can make your life easier in this regard, especially as an incident grows rapidly. This is true because it ensures you’re talking to the supervisors of each segment of the emergency, especially when assessing conditions, actions and needs.

Setting up an incident this way should also be an expectation that is agency-wide and practiced in scenario-based training. The terminology should be standardized so that your agency and neighboring agencies aren’t interpreting what you’re trying to accomplish in the heat of battle.

Summary

A clear communications plan, solid scene size-up, and early establishment of the ICS by company officers are critical to incident success. Combine this with accurate and solid accountability systems, either through analog methods or with a modern digital solution in real-time, and you guarantee safer outcomes for your crews.

The best way to be prepared is through long hours of dedicated practice in the command role and, more importantly, an agency-wide understanding of what’s in the play book: Standardization! A standard approach to managing incidents will help you remedy the chaos and enable you to hand over a well-organized incident to the first-arriving Chief.