— Volume VIII (2012) —

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The Missing Piece of NIMS: Teaching Incident Commanders How to Function in the Edge of Chaos

COMMENTS

zaharin markov June 19, 2012 23:26

Hi, the article is very interesting and up to the date. It touches a very sensitive issue of the interagency coordinated efforts. Being a military officer it would be quite useful to exchange some ideas of the coordination between military and civilian authorities.

Zaharin Markov, PhD

Col
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Bruce Freeman June 20, 2012 06:44

The article is very interesting and brings up some good points. There is definitley a need to develop Incident Commanders well beyond the current ICS training. I have served as the State Incident Commander in numerous state/federal ESF 10 responses including Hurricane's Ivan and Katrina, the
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Thomas Phelan June 20, 2012 07:05

NIMS is an emergency management system, not a first responder protocol for tactical operations. As an Operations Section Chief (not yet identified as such) is first on scene, the response effort does not require NIMS.  As a situation grows, there becomes the need for a Safety Officer, perhaps
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cory cuneo June 20, 2012 07:36

Certainly an interesting, well written article that addresses many concerns with the current NIMS system . I agree with the author that scrapping the current system is not necessary however like most plans they need to evolve as time goes on and as incidents occur and form our learning experience.
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Jeffrey Connelly June 21, 2012 06:37

  Great article and hats off to Chief Renaud for taking the time to surface such an important issue.  I have been studying the same issue from a slightly different perspective, in that I sum up the root problem as "the need to develop effective decision makers and decision-making
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Sam Benson September 27, 2012 07:38

I read The Missing Piece of NIMS: Teaching Incident Commanders How to Function in the Edge of Choas The Missing Piece of NIMS: Teaching Incident Commanders How to Function in the Edge of Chaos by Cynthia Renaud (Homeland Security Affairs, June 2012) and am quite taken aback by the tenor of the article.
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steven nottingham October 11, 2012 08:37

I do believe Mr. Benson has missed the point. Any implimentation of ICS or NIMS beyond the "Golden Hour," is a system that inherits an event. Having systems in place that supports soldiers in battle is important. The problem lies when you have not trained the commanders on the ground and
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AUTHOR:
Cynthia Renaud
Cynthia Renaud currently serves as police chief in Folsom, California. Prior to accepting this position, she served with the Long Beach Police Department for twenty years. During her career, she has been on the scene of many large-scale incidents and has participated in pre-planned events and protests. Chief Renaud holds a Master of Arts Degree from the Naval Postgraduate School in national security studies and a Master of Arts Degree from California State University, Long Beach, in english literature. She is a graduate of the FBI National Academy, Session 214, and a member of the National Tactical Officers Association.

ABSTRACT:
The National Incident Management System (NIMS) has become a subject of controversy, as many practitioners find severe limitations with the system’s field effectiveness. To label NIMS a complete failure and look for a different response tool would be rash and premature. A deeper exploration of NIMS shows that it is very useful in structuring response efforts for large-scale incidents, but only in later operational periods, when a certain amount of order has been restored. The NIMS failure point, however, is that it offers limited help to those first-arriving responders who must deal with the initial chaos inherent at the outset of every scene. This article explores the dynamics of the initial edge-of-chaos that characterizes the first phase of every large-scale incident and offers recommendations for additions to NIMS that will better prepare first-responding incident commanders to work their way through that chaos and later apply the NIMS process with purpose.

Read full article.

SUGGESTED CITATION:
Renaud, Cynthia. “The Missing Piece of NIMS: Teaching Incident Commanders How to Function in the Edge of Chaos.” Homeland Security Affairs 8, Article 8 (June 2012)
http://www.hsaj.org/?article=8.1.8
http://www.hsaj.org/