By FireRescue1 Staff
WASHINGTON — FEMA released a refreshed National Incident Management System to give guidelines on using the community as a whole in emergency situations.
FEMA reviewed more than 3,000 comments from stakeholders across the nation to update the NIMS guidance to utilize the expertise of entire communities.
According to FEMA, the refreshed NIMS:
- Retains key concepts and principles of the 2004 and 2008 versions of NIMS.
- Reflects and incorporates policy updates from lessons learned from exercises and real-world incidents and disasters.
- Clarifies the processes and terminology for qualifying, certifying and credentialing incident personnel, building a foundation for the development of a national qualification system.
- Clarifies that NIMS is more than just the Incident Command System (ICS), and that it applies to all incident personnel, from the incident command post to the National Response Coordination Center.
- Describes common functions and terminology for staff in Emergency Operations Centers (EOC), while remaining flexible to allow for differing missions, authorities and resources of EOCs across the nation.
- Explains the relationship among ICS, EOCs and senior leaders/policy groups.
A series of webinars will be hosted by FEMA to talk about the updates and answer questions. For information on the webinars, click here.