Five Years after Fukushima: Incident Management Considerations

Five years ago, I traveled to Japan as part of the U.S. Government’s response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. With March marking the five year anniversary of Fukushima, this article attempts to highlight some incident management lessons learned and considerations for nuclear and radiological incident management. This month marks …

EMSI Conducts Full Scale Exercise for NCR IMT

This past week, EMSI conducted a three day exercise for the National Capital Region (NCR) Incident Management Team (IMT). Held in Front Royal, VA March 14-16, the exercise included participants not only from the NCR IMT, but from the Central Virginia and Hampton Road IMTs, as well as participants from …

Command Boards Now Available through IMTGear

Now available through IMTGear: Command Boards and other quality products from Command Concepts. The Command Board is a portable incident management tool that sets up in less than a minute to organize on-the-spot command and incident management functions, facilitating quick situational awareness, resource status, and decision-making. A highly useful tool, …

The ICS-234: What it is and why you should be using it

A well-known and important tool, the Operational Planning Worksheet (ICS-215) is used by the Operations Section Chief in preparing for the next Operational Period; a less well known, but equally important tool, is the Work Analysis Matrix (ICS-234). Looking at an ICS Operational Planning “P”, your work on the ICS-215 …

New Joint Information Center (JIC) Job Aid!

Continuing to provide critical emergency management performance support to responders, EMSI is proud to offer our new Joint Information Center (JIC) job aid and JIC course . The job aid and course were recently developed by Type 1 PIOs with extensive public information and joint information experience, in consultation with …

How to Conduct Collaborative Crisis Communication

This post should really be titled, “If You’re Not Collaborating With Others During a Crisis Situation, You Need to Rewrite Your Crisis Plan.” That’s a bit wordy, though. Here’s the thing about being at the center of a crisis – whether you look at it from the standpoint of your …

Why Collaborate on Public Communication During a Crisis?

“BLUF.” If you’ve never seen the acronym, it means, “Bottom line, up front.” Insert it at the beginning of any piece of written communication, and you’re telling those receiving the message, “This is the most important part.” If you’re a professional communicator, it’s similar to the concept of “flagging” during …

Transitioning from a Reactive to Proactive Response

“KA-BOOM!” happens and we launch our response. It is the ingrained nature of responders; when something happens, we react and respond to it. If set up for success and the response starts right, this initial reactionary response will lay the ground work for the next several operational periods, should the …

Prism Inflatable Lights Available through IMT Gear

Now available through IMTGear.com: The Prism Inflatable Light and other Prism Lighting Services products. The Prism Inflatable Light (PIL) is characterized by a supporting structure in synthetic fabric and an air-inflated cylinder, which raises the metal halide lamp (1000W equivalent to 9500 lm of brightness) up to 4.5 meters (15 …