Incident Command System: A Case Study

The Incident Command System (ICS) was first developed and introduced in the 1970’s when a string of catastrophic fires were springing up in California. The destruction of property created by the fires produced skyrocketed in the millions causing many people to be seriously injured or perish during the event. The individuals who were assigned to investigate the cause of these fires in California studied the case histories and discovered that response efforts to battle such catastrophes could be attributed to the lack of resources and the failure of tactics during these operations.
Fast forwarding to 2003, the Homeland Security Presidential Directive-5 (HSPD-5) identified steps to improve coordination in response to incidents and it required the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to coordinate with other Federal departments and agencies. The ICS is designed to be a management system that enables effective and efficient domestic incident management by integrating a combination of facilities, equipment, personnel, procedures, and communications operating within a common organizational structure (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2014). Coordination to a major response will take the full effort from multiple jurisdictions to those from State, local, and tribal governments, thus
Incident response without the use of ICS could create a lack of accountability, poor communications, an unsystematic planning process and a failure to reach the desired objective, and the inability to efficiently integrate responders into standard organizational structures and roles (Introduction to Incident Command System, ICS-100, 2013). Since the creation of the ICS has been around for more than 40 years, the concept of the ICS is built on best practices and these practices all stem from lessons learned over the