At the 2004 ASSE conference in Las Vegas, John Henshaw, then Director of Federal OSHA, and John Howard, Director of the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), each stated unequivocally that every safety professional in today's world needs to have a knowledge of and background in the use of the standardized Incident Command System (ICS). Both of these safety industry leaders recognized that effective emergency incident management of almost any size or type requires a system of command and control and the ICS was the best system to use.
To further reinforce the point and show the value of the ICS, most of us will recall that, shortly after the 2005 conference closed in New Orleans, that area was devastated by major storms and levee breaks, situations which also required the use of a standardized emergency management system and the ICS. But it has been widely reported that the response efforts broke down and were ineffective, situations that were created when a strong command and control system was not employed.
Why is it that some safety professionals have not taken the advice of these key leaders or learned from recent events? Why is it that the ICS, which has been shown to be effective in both managing the incident and in promoting the safety of response personnel regardless of the type of emergency situation in which the ICS is used, is still is not well known or well understood by those of us in the safety profession? The answers to these questions no doubt vary widely within our industry, and here are some possible ideas as to why this is the case.
For some, it may be that we just do not believe that it is necessary to use this system for what we do, since we have other proven systems already in place. At our sites, many of us may already feel that we know our hazards, the materials we work with, and the operations that take place. We may feel that our problems are easily handled with systems already in place and that any other problems can't be that hard to handle, since we know the materials and their properties so well already.
Still, others may have heard about the system but believe it is not really designed for us. We may think that the system is far too complex and is really just for those emergency response professionals. We may have discounted it as something for others, and not for us.
And for many, we may not know that we are actually required to use this system and that the previously discussed positions are simply not true. OSHA mandates that all emergency response to releases or potential releases of hazardous materials be managed using the standardized Incident Command System, the ICS. Further, the regulations provide very specific rules that will help us guide our response efforts. Using these rules will help ensure the safety of our response personnel.
