THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEMS

1. Human beings work better together under emergency conditions if they have a preplanned chain of command.

2. Any one worker should receive orders from only one supervisor. (The "too many chiefs spoil the stew" principle")(or is that "chefs"? :-) Stated another way - any one worker should not be taking orders from 2 or more different supervisors at the same time.

3. A good span of control is - one supervisor to five workers.

4. Any one incident must have only one person at the top of the chain of command. Stated another way - if an incident is being led by three different leaders at the same time, then it will become very difficult to organize the rescue forces into a coordinated force.

5. When a new supervisor is substituted for an old supervisor, then all people directly involved need to be notified when this change occurs.

6. Human beings cannot listen and talk at the same time with positive results.

7. I am sure that there are many other people who can go into much better detail on this subject.

NOTE - In ?1995, the Phoenix ICS and the US Fire Academy ICS were merged - or something like that - possibly the NFPA ICS and the Wildland Fire ICS are different (I think that the Firescope ICS out of Southern California was the basis of the US Fire Academy ICS).

10/12/99 - This URL will explain the previous paragraph (and supply a good look at ICS) - ICS

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By Peter Szerlag - May 23, 1999 - Oct 12, 1999

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