MCI Leadership Problems

MMiz

I put the M in EMTLife
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After reading a story and reflecting on my experience in the field, I notice that there seems to be a breakdown in communication between Fire, EMS, and Police, on MCI type calls.

The private company I work for serves a city with paid police, volunteer fire, and our private company for EMS. It seems that whenever we get on a larger scene, our EMS supervisors take the lead, while the FD and Police support us.

The problem is, communication and planning isn't always the best, and at times we act as three individual organizations, each with our own purpose. We have supervisors in the field, but it seems as though usually no one person takes charge.

Anyone have any comments? Have you had any larger drills that tested your command structure? How did they go?

Thanks as always!
 

Chimpie

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Drills are a good thing. I remember years ago when our area departments would do a tornado drill at the college. The Sheriff's Dept, College Security, Vol. FD and AMR would respond to a portion of the college where there would be structrual damage, about 25-50 patients and debris in the roadways. The great thing was that all of the responding departments, excluding security, would know where on campus the drill was going to take place. All responding units were to stage somewhere off campus, about a mile or so away, and then security would call 911 and then everything would be dispatched, staggering responses from all units.

I have to say this was a great drill and really taught everyone on how to use the incident command system.

I guess a few questions are:

Are all departments dispatched from the same comm center?
Have their been meetings planned and SOPs drawn up to handle who is in charge?
What type of radio system do all the departments use? Are they all on the same system?

More later,

Chimp
 

rescuecpt

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Where we are, first person on scene (no matter what agency) is the Incident Commander. If it's a non-fire person, they usually hand it off to a fire chief when the FD gets there, then they coordinate everything from that point on.

It's one of those things that don't work really well unless you drill regularly. We have at least one township-wide (13 FDs and two separate ambulance corps) drill yearly, then we do 2 or more localized drills (my FD and one or two of our surrounding departments) to practice smaller scale but still MCI operations.
 

PArescueEMT

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Drills ARE wonderful things. not only for the agencues, but for the individual as well. It helps you understand what our role is in the grand scheme of things. I've done a couple of drills involving transportation problems.

My first was with Amtrak®. They brought a crappy train for us to have fun with, popped it off the rails, hired 14 contortionists to play the red tag Pts. 2 I had cut out from under the seats.

I also live and work in a city with a major international airport. Every 2 years, they have a disaster drill. The last one was a device detonated in an engine of the aircraft. I barely remember all of the details on that.

I am a firm supporter of drilling with other departments. I would even try to include state and federal officials into things to get a feel for how they want things done.
 

burntbob

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With diverse organizations at a scene that may involve major roles for all I like working with the "Emergency Site Management" system rather than ICS.
ESM is more of a shared leadership role where the "emergency site manager" , no matter what organization they come from, has to take off that command role for their agency, and focus on bringing all the partners together to decide on strategy and what each group needs.
A key point is all top commanders must meet for a round table report on a regular basis to report on the status of their part of the reponse, what their challenges are and their greatest worry and then joint strategy is planned to get people to work together and to target where the response needs to focus for the best results.

All systems require drills and work and for partners to check their egos and preconceptions at the door- and it's better to learn that at a drill than when lives are at stake.
 

Jon

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Originally posted by burntbob@Nov 15 2004, 10:48 PM
With diverse organizations at a scene that may involve major roles for all I like working with the "Emergency Site Management" system rather than ICS.
ESM is more of a shared leadership role where the "emergency site manager" , no matter what organization they come from, has to take off that command role for their agency, and focus on bringing all the partners together to decide on strategy and what each group needs.
A key point is all top commanders must meet for a round table report on a regular basis to report on the status of their part of the reponse, what their challenges are and their greatest worry and then joint strategy is planned to get people to work together and to target where the response needs to focus for the best results.

All systems require drills and work and for partners to check their egos and preconceptions at the door- and it's better to learn that at a drill than when lives are at stake.
NEVER HEARD OF IT. I do like CS, but as has been stated, needs to be used often. One way - try to pull out the vests on any multi-agency response, not just the real big ones. It makes things simple.

Also, anyone have a sourse for real cheap ICS vests?


Jon
 

ffemt8978

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Originally posted by MedicStudentJon@Dec 31 2004, 02:38 PM
Also, anyone have a sourse for real cheap ICS vests?
No, but have you looked into different colored baseball caps with their ICS post on the front? Might be cheaper than the vests.
 

Jon

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Originally posted by ffemt8978+Dec 31 2004, 05:17 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (ffemt8978 @ Dec 31 2004, 05:17 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-MedicStudentJon@Dec 31 2004, 02:38 PM
Also, anyone have a sourse for real cheap ICS vests?
No, but have you looked into different colored baseball caps with their ICS post on the front? Might be cheaper than the vests. [/b][/quote]
Never thought of that. Plus, dosen't get in the way of the ANSI III vest the T-pike has us wear, and fits EVERYONE
 
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