History of the System After the analysis and evaluation of the catastrophic

fire season of 1970 and the identification of the

Incident Command and difficulties that arose in the management of the
implementation in Latin America different
and the Caribbean

Prepared by:
Maria Luisa Alfaro
Incident Command System and
Comprehensive Fire Management
Consultant Lilian Magaña Surge
Capacity

The Incident Command System - SCI, helps ensure

the integration of our efforts during the response to an
incident, event or operation. The SCI allows all
responders to adopt an integrated organizational
structure that matches the complexity and demands of
the incident, while respecting institutional and
jurisdictional levels of authority. Although the SCI
promotes standardization, it is not without the
necessary flexibility; For example, the ICS
organizational structure can expand or contract to
meet the needs of the incident.
Although most incidents are handled locally,
partnerships may be necessary between Municipality,
State, Department, Province and National, as well as
the private sector and non-governmental
organizations. The most important thing is that you
learn to interact with your partners in a response.
Photo Pedro Soto
History of the Incident Command System
In the 1970s, Southern California experienced a
devastating wildfire season. At that moment, the sky
was filled with giant columns of smoke and
firefighting units crossed each other on the road,
while some were heading north, others were heading
south. The number of fires that occurred at the same
time aggravated the organizational capacity to protect
lives, property and the environment, especially when
the fires began to border wild and urban areas. These
fires, over 13 days, resulted in 16 deaths, 700
structures destroyed, more than 500,000 acres burned,
and more than $234 million in damage.
incidents, the United States Congress allocated
$900,000 to the Forest Service to develop a system
that would allow it to improve the capabilities of
wildfire response agencies and effectively coordinate
response at the multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional
level.
Congressional funding was used to establish a
research program and a fire laboratory was developed
in Riverside, which eventually became known as
FireScope (FIrefighting RESources of California
Organized for Potential Emergencies). .
The FIRSCOPE Group, after analysis and study,
found that response problems could rarely be
attributed to lack of resources or failure of tactics and
lessons. learned, identifying
probable situations of inadequate management.
Weaknesses in incident management were often due
to:
• Lack of accountability, including chains of
command and little oversight.
• Poor communication, due to ineffective uses

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 of available communications systems and
1
Incident: Event of natural cause or human
activity that requires the action of
Emergency Services personnel to protect
lives, property and the environment.
2
Multiple Incident: Consists of two or more
incidents, located in the same geographic
area (scenario), to which a single IC is
assigned to facilitate their management.
codes, in addition to not having a common
terminology.
• Lack of an orderly and systematic planning
process.
• Not having a common, flexible and pre-
designed management structure that would
allow commanders to delegate
responsibilities and manage workloads
efficiently.
• As there are no predefined methods to
integrate inter-institutional requirements into
the management structure and planning
process effectively.
The use of the SCI allows us to avoid these
weaknesses that may arise during incident
response.
The designers of the Incident Command System
took into consideration four essential
requirements :
1. The system had to be organizational and
flexible to meet the needs of any type and
size of 1 incident.
2. Agencies needed to be able to use the
system on a day-to-day basis as well as in 2
multiple incidents and 3 complex incidents.
3. The system had to be sufficiently
standardized to allow staff from different
agencies and different locations to
3 geographic area, a specific area was chosen, and the
Complex Incident: It is one that presents a
diversity of problems, different factors
combine that make it difficult to control the
incident, and it also requires the
2
intervention of many institutions.
geographic areas could quickly coalesce into
a common structure to handle the incident.
4. The system had to be profitable.
By 1975, the conceptual definition and organizational
structure of the SCI were relatively well defined. The
system had been examined through a rigorous
exercise conducted at the California Specialized
Training Institute at Camp San Luis Obispo in late
1974 and shortly thereafter, the City of Los Angeles
Fire Department began testing parts of the system
such as a means of validation.
In 1975, the Pacoima Fire in the Angeles National
Forest became the first major incident to be officially
managed with SCI and the MACS (Multi-Agency
Coordination System).
The SCI demonstrated effectiveness, but not all staff
were familiar with the new system, so it was not
initially widely accepted for the following reasons:
• Adequate training on the system had not
been carried out.
• The agencies had not integrated the new
system into their daily response operations
procedures.
• Some agencies were trying to operate in
both the old and new systems.
• Due largely to these reasons, after a few
days experimenting with SCI, Pacoima Fire
management reverted to using the old
emergency management system.
In 1976, elements of the SCI were used in the
Western Tower fire in Los Angeles, a fact that
demonstrates that even from the beginning, the
applicability of the SCI was greater than that to forest
fires.
In April 1976, the first SCI implementation proposal
was developed and the FIRESCOPE charter was
renewed.
In 1977, the focus for the next five years became the
implementation of the system components. Part of the
implementation proposal focused on the exercise and
evaluation of the relationship between the SCI and
MACS. The original implementation plan
recommended evaluating the systems in a designated
plan included the development of more robust
operational procedures to subsequently train
personnel in those procedures.
HOW WAS SCI APPROVED NATIONALLY IN
THE UNITED STATES?
At the same time that the SCI was being deployed
in Southern California, the National Wildfire
Coordinating Group (NWCG) realized that
parallel efforts were underway regarding the
management of wildfire incidents, while
continuing to operate under LFO. The NWCG
carried out an analysis with FIRESCOPE for
possible national application, the result of this
work led to the development of the National
Incident Management System (NIMS), and the
national implementation of the SCI was requested.
In 1983, FEMA began including SCI in the
National Fire Academy curriculum. As the use of
SCI gradually spread across fire services across
the United States, other agencies were working to
incorporate SCI into their response procedures.
In 1989, the SCI was incorporated into the search
and rescue groups of the United States, in the
structure and functional processes of the USAR
teams, in addition to the support team that
integrates the work groups with the local response
during emergencies.
The expansion of SCI within the fire service
discipline was further encouraged when the
National Fire Protection Association's Standard
1500 was revised in 1992, requiring all fire
departments to establish procedures for the use of
SCI. In 2004, the use of the Incident Command
System in the United States was officially
established and mandatory.
Benefits of implementing the Incident Command
System
• Helps in choosing the best Administration
practices.
• The safety of all personnel working on the
incident, event or operation is prioritized.
• The success of the objectives of the
answer.
• Allows you to have a tool
standardized administration for
management of incidents, events or
operations, integrating government
institutions, the private sector and non-
governmental organizations, none
institution and organization loses its
authority and responsibility.
• Optimize the use of resources and
reduce costs of operations.
• Allow the different institutions
can operate under the same framework.
• Keep track of information
that is generated in the incident and the
management of statistics in the country.
International adoption of the SCI
The SCI has proven not only useful in the United
States, but has also been implemented and adapted
for use in other countries, for example.
Australia
In the 1980s the Australian Inter-Service Incident
Management System (AIIMS) developed its model
based largely on the SCI. It was designed to be "a
management system for any emergency", although in
its beginnings it was implemented only by
firefighters, there has been growing recognition of the
benefits of incident management that involves all
emergency service providers. . This has been
reflected in legislation, government policy and
disaster and emergency management planning;
established within and between public safety
organizations.
Although it is quite similar to SCI, there is one
important difference: the term "Command" has been
replaced by "Control". In Australia, SCI is called
"Control System" and the "Incident Command"
function is called "Incident Control". Regardless of
these semantic differences, AIIMS is largely based on
and compatible with SCI. During intense wildfire
seasons, the United States and Australia have
historically exchanged Incident Management Teams,
further demonstrating the similarities between the
systems.
Canada
SCI was first implemented in Canada on a large scale
by the Province of British Columbia in the mid-
1990s. In 2002, the Canadian Interagency Wildland
Fire Center (CIFFC) introduced the CIFFC SCI
the Canadian Version doctrine along with a
comprehensive set of training materials for the
territory of Canada, as part of its mandate to its
provincial, territorial and federal members. Several
non-wildland fire organizations also early adopted
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this model, and in subsequent years SCI adoption
increased significantly.
In 2009, the CIFFC was preparing to update the SCI
curriculum on wildland fires in Canada. At the time,
the Alberta Emergency Management Agency
(AEMA) was also reviewing its need to provide a
single system that could meet its long-term provincial
emergency management needs. Simultaneously, the
CIFFC was sponsored through Parks Canada to apply
for a New Initiative Fund contribution agreement to
provide a comprehensive SCI training program for all
Search and Rescue in Canada. The collaboration of
these initiatives into a single effort formed the basis
of SCI Canada and today it has several member
bodies.
In 1986, following the international response to the
devastating Mexico City earthquake, where response
operations were not as effective and efficient as
desired, the United States Department of State began
using the SCI to support future earthquake
operations. international response. After slight
modifications to operating procedures and
organizational structure, SCI became the incident
management system to coordinate U.S. relief efforts
internationally.
The Incident Command System as a standardized
management system:
The Incident Command System includes
guidelines for quality management systems
as it designs, documents and implements a
system that achieves the standardization of
organizational processes and methods, in
this case, it allows the execution of planned
actions that respond to specific objectives.
The Incident Command System is based on
the administrative principles of:
1. Planning: Phase where objectives are
formulated and strategies, activities and
resources are determined to achieve them.
2. Organization: Establishes the system of
relationships between functions, people and
physical factors, to order and direct efforts
towards objectives.
3. Direction: Promotes activities,
motivating, guiding and coordinating those
responsible for carrying them out.
4. Control: Comparison of the actual
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development of the administrative process,
with pre-established standards, detection
and evaluation of deviations and application
of the necessary corrective actions.
In 2011, international standards were made official
through the ISO and NFPA quality systems, which
are related to the Incident Command System.
ISO 22320:2011 Standard
The ISO 22320:2011 standard determines the
minimum requirements necessary to provide an
effective response to emergencies and provides the
basic elements for command and control, operational
information, coordination and cooperation between
the organizations that are involved during the
response to an incident.
For the success of incident response, the
interrelationship between the organizations involved
is essential. The standard also helps ensure that
information is operational, timely, appropriate and
accurate for processes, work systems, data capture
and management processes.
NFPA 1561 Standard
The NFPA 1561 standard is specific to the Incident
Management System for Emergency Services, it
contains the minimum requirements for an incident
management system to be used by emergency
services in the management of all incidents and
emergencies.
History of SCI in Latin America and the
Caribbean
In 1998, the first response institutions of Latin
America made a request to the United States Office
of Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA/LAC)
Latin America and the Caribbean Region, based on
the need to strengthen the capabilities for incident
management, with a system that would allow them to
improve the coordination and optimization of
resources, due to the lack of a systematic
organizational model for responding to incidents,
emergencies and disasters.
The factors that motivated OFDA/LAC to contribute
to this strengthening and to search for a model were
based on the following aspects:
• The growth and increase in risk in urban
areas, added to resource limitations.
 • The increase in multiple and complex
incidents that required greater management
and coordination capacity between state
institutions, non-governmental organizations
and the private sector.
That same year, OFDA/LAC held a meeting in
Caracas, Venezuela, where experts from first
response institutions from different countries
(Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru,
Costa Rica, Guatemala), OFDA/LAC consultants
met. and a Miami Dade County Firefighters Advisory
team, where different alternatives are evaluated on
how to strengthen capacities for managing
emergencies and disasters in the region. In the
analysis, some weaknesses were detected, such as, for
example, operational difficulties when integrating
several institutions, leadership, management,
coordination, planning. Not all institutions had
written procedures.
With these observations, OFDA-LAC formed a
smaller team of experts, in which different
management models were analyzed and it was
concluded that the best model, which could be
adapted to the region, was the Command System of
Incidents.
In 2001, a Project was implemented in Central
America through the United States Southern
Command or USSOUTHCOM.
This project seeks to help countries to have National
Response Plans (PNR) and Emergency Operations
Centers (COE). All the lessons learned during the
response actions due to the effects of “Hurricane
Mitch in 1998” were taken into account.
Photo Municipal Coordination of Civil Protection and
Firefighters of Zapopan
One of the objectives was for each country to have
protocols for the Operations Centers and these
documents indicated the following:
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“All institutions participating in an incident must
be organized under the structure of the Incident
Command System and based on its principles.”
Although the protocols establish the use of the
Incident Command System, the Central American
countries were not clear about how to implement the
model and how to standardize it at the national level.
In 2003, teams of instructors from Costa Rica and
Mexico made an analysis of the SCI Course and
made a new approach due to the demand for training
and the Basic Incident Command System Course was
developed and the SCI Course was reviewed and
adjusted and is called Intermediate Course.
In 2004, the observations of the countries were
analyzed and the conclusion was reached that the
training courses were not enough to cover the needs
of the countries and it was determined that the SCI
was a process and that the training was only one part.
of the same.
In the evaluation of the pilot countries, it was found
that the institutions did not have written operating
procedures, that there were no standardized protocols
between the institutions, that there was no baseline or
diagnosis as a starting point, there were no resource
inventories and there was no a national classification
for resources, since each institution arrived at the
incident and established its own command post.
Year 2005, after the analysis and the lessons learned
in the training component, it was determined that the
SCI is not a course, but a process, so OFDA/LAC and
with the contribution of the countries (Mexico, Costa
Rica, Ecuador, Colombia ) A Guide was developed to
guide the implementation of the Incident Command
System process in Latin America.
This Guide was improved with the contributions and
experience in the implementation of the process in
the countries and currently the Region has a Guide to
guide the implementation of an Incident Command
System in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Currently, there are 13 countries in the Region that
are making efforts to implement the Incident
Command System process.
• Mexico
• Guatemala
• The Savior
 Adopting the Incident Command System in
• Honduras response to the need for an emergency
management system will allow us to:
• Nicaragua

• Costa Rica
• Establish command and design
organizational structures according to the
complexity of the incidents
• Dominican Republic • Develop procedures that facilitate
decision making
• Haiti • Through the use of forms, provide
traceability to the process
• Colombia
• Manage information and communication
• Ecuador
within the corresponding levels of the
structure

• Peru • Establish objectives, strategies and

tactics to respond to incidents.
• Brazil
Actions promoted by the Incident Command System
• Paraguay
Incident Command System promotes that the
• Chili National Emergency System and Institutions work on
continuous improvement of their processes since
The adoption of the Incident Command
cities grow and the level of risks increases,
System as a standardized management technology and equipment change in institutions,
concept on the scene should be a strategic emergency plans must be reviewed and socialized,
decision of the organization, since, like just as protocols and procedures and incidents change
quality management systems, this in their level of magnitude and complexity.
emergency management tool is influenced
by: Therefore, the Incident Command System that the
institutions and system teams must:
• The organization's environment, changes • Evaluate the planning of your cities every
in that environment, and risks associated year and the plans must be reviewed and
updated.
with that environment,

• The changing needs of emergency

management systems,
• The particular objectives of each Entity,
• The products it provides,
• The processes it uses,
• The size and structure of
organization.
It is important to highlight that the decision-
making process allows us to implement
courses of action to solve the problems that
currently arise, the possible deficiencies that
can be found when facing an emergency
situation usually focus on the field of
planning, management and response.
• The organizational system must be clear
internally and externally of the institution in
a way that allows all the actors that make up
the System to work in an integrated manner.
• Training must be constant for all personnel
so that they can grow professionally in
emergency management. It is very important
that the country has a certification and
accreditation system and thus guarantee
the generational change.
• After each incident, institutions must review
the functioning of their equipment and tools
and promote new technologies that facilitate
the work and safety of staff.
The exercise must be constant for all personnel of the
institution, from senior management to lower-ranking
personnel, they must be clear about their role and
position during an incident, emergency or disaster

6
and thus guarantee that everyone manages the
institutional procedures and inter-institutional
• The system must establish unity of
command, meaning that each person
protocols. in the incident reports to only one
The post-incident evaluation and the analysis of person at a time at any given time.
lessons learned contribute to institutions developing a
process of continuous improvement and making
• Each individual who supervises the
work of others must maintain a
corrections and taking corrective measures, the SCI manageable range of control.
promotes constant preparation.
• The system's main characteristic is
The time it takes to resolve a crisis situation flexibility, which is why it must be
useful for all types of incidents.
is directly proportional to the increase in
negative effects, which is why the SCI • The system must use terminology
guidelines seek to minimize those that is understood by all responding
administration inconveniences that may agencies, including those in
cause delays in making operational neighboring jurisdictions.
decisions. • The system must lead to the closure
of the incident.
Helps ensure that information is operational, • The health and safety of responders
timely and reliable by establishing processes must be the highest priority.
for planning, processing and reviewing
information. What should a first responder know about his or
her country and institution if he or she wants to
It establishes the bases for coordination and pursue a career in the SCI?
cooperation, ensuring that all relevant
parties act in alignment, that is,
communication problems do not occur and
• Emergency legal framework of your
country.
the use of resources in a combined and
effective manner is ensured. • Response framework for your country's
emergency management.
Through the use of protocols, it establishes • Manage the country's protocols for
interoperability requirements between the emergency management.
organizations involved to achieve successful • Course on Country Emergency
incident response. Management.

The Incident Command System frames

several common elements, independent of Bibliography
the type of incident:
A working history of the incident command
• The system must be documented in
system, EMSI, IMTDGEAR, 2017
writing as a standard operating
procedure.
Reference Material for the Incident Command
• The system must be easy to use, System Basic Course. USAID/OFDA/LAC, 2013
with all staff trained in its use.
• The system must be flexible, Reference Material for the Advanced Incident
modular and easy to apply to each Command System Course. USAID/OFDA/LAC,
incident.
2016
• Only one person should be
commanding at a time.
Implementation of the Incident Command System
• Every individual, company, and Process in Latin America and the Caribbean,
incident response agency must fit Luisa Alfaro, 2015
into and be under the control of the
system.
National Incident Management System, United
• The system must identify positions of States Department of Homeland Security, 2004
authority and their responsibilities.