|
Back to Major Incident ICS Functions ICS Details
|
Please load this helper picture to help understand the Incident Command System Back in 1970's the fire service started to realize they needed a uniformality in the way they operated such as communications, utilities, planning, etc. Out of this brainstorming came "Firescope" (Firefighting Resources of California Organized for Potential Emergencies), the standarized fire service for the State of California. Out of Firescope came the Incident Command System or ICS for short. The ICS was made for 3 purposes; preparing for a disaster, responding to a disaster, and recovering from a disaster. Since ICS worked so well, it became popular throughout the nation and they adopted ICS as their standard also. During the 1991 Oakland Hills fire which torched 4500 homes, including a state senator's home, the state legislature passed in 1993 a bill to improve the coordination between state and local government emergency resources. The State OES took the responsibility and designed and implemented SEMS (Standardized Emergency Management System) for California. SEMS takes the ICS, mutual aid aspects, multipile agency coordination and the "operational area" concept into one big package that is required by every fire agency in the state to adopt and adhere by. |