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A new system to handle emergencies from a nuclear holocaust to a car crash is going into place across the country. The National Incident Management System (NIMS) will give emergency personnel, state agencies and the military standardized protocols to follow when emergencies occur.
NIMS became effective March 1, and by Oct. 1, 2005, it will be the mandated standard across the country.
The Association of Public-Safety Communication Officials (APCO) held a training conference for telecommunicators in Dewey Beach over the weekend. Emergency personnel, first-responders and dispatchers from Delmarva heard NIMS explained for the first time during the conference.
“We learned a lot from 9-11 where a bunch of agencies were working on one thing together,” said Delaware State Police Lt. Ron Hagan. “The fire service has been using NIMS for 30 years after the large wildfires out west. When the federal government said they wanted a standard system, the fire service said they already had one.”
NIMS revolves around six principles. The first is that every group that might respond to an emergency must have NIMS-trained staff.
The second principle is preparedness.
“If you know a hurricane is coming, you know what you are going to need during the incident,” Hagan said. “You can get the ball rolling.”
NIMS preparedness mandates mutual aid agreements to share equipment and personnel, public outreach efforts to prevent death or injuries, structural retrofitting and insurance to save property.
The next NIMS principle is resource management. NIMS mandates a protocol to describe and inventory resources, as well as methods for deploying, using and retrieving those resources before and after emergencies.
The third principle, which most affects public safety communications officials, is communications and information management.
“It’s nice to know when I’m working on the radio with the fire service that I can get through to DelDOT (Department of Transportation) without jumping through a lot of hoops,” Hagan said of the benefits of NIMS. “Interoperability is the key word here.”
NIMS communications and information management aims to develop and maintain overall awareness and understanding of an incident within and across jurisdictions, according to their manual.
The next NIMS principle concerns supporting technologies. NIMS mandates research and development efforts be made to ensure emergency responders receive the best technology available.
The last NIMS principle is the on-going management and maintenance protocol, which concerns the overall management of the NIMS system.
Anyone interested in NIMS can find the complete explanation on the web site, www.fema.gov.
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