We're a private non-profit 911 service. We are not affiliated w/ our town. We're dispatched by fire and are generally directed by the fire chief. Once in a while we have scenes that are appropriate for Incident Command. An example might be a 4 car accident on the highway, there might be 4 or more ambulances, a couple of engines, heavy rescue, state/local police. Our Chief is VERY proactive, meaning it is likely that he would be at every non trivial MVA, and if ICS was needed, he would and does call command.
We've essentially been directed that our service cannot call command. Some people say it's a control issue. It's taken as a given (by us) that we're qualified to call command. We've all taken the appropriate ICS training (100, 200, 700?) and it's part of our EMT Basic class too. So the consensus is that we think we *should* be able to call "command" if we're first on a bad scene.
I had the chance to talk very briefly to the chief about this and what I think he was saying was that because we are a private service, not a municipal service, that we do not have the legal authority to call command. I'm not trying to prove him wrong. If he says we can't call command then that is how it is. I was just surprised to hear there might be restrictions like that.
If you are a private service, are you allowed to call command?
We've essentially been directed that our service cannot call command. Some people say it's a control issue. It's taken as a given (by us) that we're qualified to call command. We've all taken the appropriate ICS training (100, 200, 700?) and it's part of our EMT Basic class too. So the consensus is that we think we *should* be able to call "command" if we're first on a bad scene.
I had the chance to talk very briefly to the chief about this and what I think he was saying was that because we are a private service, not a municipal service, that we do not have the legal authority to call command. I'm not trying to prove him wrong. If he says we can't call command then that is how it is. I was just surprised to hear there might be restrictions like that.
If you are a private service, are you allowed to call command?