EMC019 - ICS Staff

Continuation of ICS series, 19/20

The GENERAL STAFF of incident management personnel consists of the: Incident Commander, Operations Chief, Planning Chief, Logistics Chief and Finance Chief.

The COMMAND STAFF (assists the Incident Commander) consists of the Information Officer, Safety Officer and the Liaison Officer.

The Information Officer develops information regarding incident cause, size, current situation, resources committed and other matters of general interest. The IO (sometimes called PIO) is the point of contact with the Media directly from the incident.

The Liaison Officer is the person responsible for interacting with representatives from assisting and cooperating agencies. This position is the single point of contact for representatives from other agencies. In a single command structure the representatives from assisting agencies would coordinate through the Liaison Officer. Under a Unified Command structure, representatives from agencies NOT involved in the unified command would coordinate through the Liaison Officer. Agency representatives assigned to an incident should have authority to speak on all matters for their agency.

The Safety Officer assesses hazardous and unsafe situations and develoops measures for assuring personnel safety. This Officer should have emergency authority to stop and or/prevent unsafe acts. Under a unified command structure, a single Safety Officer would be designated. Assistants may be required and may be assigned from other agencies or departments making up the unified command.

Meanwhile, at the fire, the all out air assault at the marshy area outside of the city stopped the raging fire storm. The units have been demobilized and are returning to their home bases, tired but successful in yet another cooperative incident response with the Incident Command System. One that provided the means for people from various modalities, agencies and jurisdictions to function as a unified function.

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