COMDTINST 3120.14
that non-Coast Guard personnel can assimilate. Recent exercises and events have
successfully tested ICS for other Coast Guard contingencies where ICS is particularly
relevant, developing the Coast Guard Incident Commander (CGIC) response organization,
reference (c). Tests of Commander Coast Guard Forces (CCGF) and the traditional Search
and Rescue (SAR) organization and procedures have shown ease of ICS use and benefits to
its employment. Based on these and similar reasons, the Joint Operations and Marine
Safety Coordination Council (JOMSCC) decided to adopt NIIMS ICS as the response
management system for all Coast Guard response operations. This instruction reflects that
decision.
b.
Reference (c) identifies ten separate contingencies that Coast Guard contingency plans
should address. It also describes both Commander Coast Guard Forces (CCGF) and Coast
Guard Incident Commander (CGIC) as acceptable contingency response organizations, but
does not mandate the use of one or the other for the various contingencies. While both of
these organizations promote unity of command and unity of effort for Coast Guard forces
involved in any contingency response operation, they encompass different extents of
operational control over subordinate units and different organizational structures and
processes.
c.
The failure to adopt a standard response system within the Coast Guard can create
inefficiencies for all parties involved in response operations. These inefficiencies include:
(1)
Use of a response system not normally in the public domain, which precludes its use
to all members of the response community and increases training costs.
(2)
The lack of a standard system forces units to locate and provide training from any
available source. This potentially duplicates effort and does not foster doctrine that
instills ICS within each command.
(3)
The lack of a standard response management system prevents the development of a
highly effective training curriculum. A structured training curriculum would result
in qualified personnel who can immediately support units engaged in contingency
response nationally, regionally, and locally, unimpacted by transfers among
different Coast Guard units.
5.
DISCUSSION.
a.
NIIMS ICS was originally designed by a group of local, state, and federal agencies with fire
protection responsibilities to improve the ability of fire forces to respond to any type of
emergency. A new training curriculum was completed in 1994 to better reflect the all
hazard-all risk capability of NIIMS (applicable to all emergencies, i.e., floods, earthquakes,
spills, fires). It is organizationally flexible, and capable of expanding and contracting to
accommodate responses of varying size or complexity.
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