Kentucky First

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Kentucky Becomes First State in the Nation to Complete Important National Incident Management System Requirement

FRANKFORT, Ky.: This week, the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security was informed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that Kentucky is the first state in the nation to complete the National Incident Management System Capability Assessment Support Tool (NIMCAST), the first step in the process to reaching full National Incident Management System (NIMS) compliance.

The NIMS was established by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide a consistent nationwide template to enable all government, private-sector, and nongovernmental organizations to work together during domestic incidents. NIMS compliance is a prerequisite to obtaining most federal preparedness funding.

“Our office understands the tremendous efforts so many local agencies and officials made to meet this NIMS compliance benchmark,” said Major Alecia Webb-Edgington, Interim Director of the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security. “I want to continue to encourage all of the commonwealth’s local officials, responders, care providers and support agencies to continue to meet all NIMS compliance requirements to ensure Kentucky remains at the forefront of this important homeland security initiative.”

The NIMCAST is a web-based, self-assessment system that state agencies and local jurisdictions used to evaluate their incident response and management capabilities. It also identifies how compliant an agency is with federal incident management guidelines.

Emergency personnel from all 120 counties and over 2280 local agencies completed the NIMCAST earlier this month, making Kentucky the first in the nation to complete this step in the compliance process. Throughout the past several months, the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security has partnered with various agencies to ensure completion of the NIMCAST, including Kentucky’s 15 Area Development Districts, the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management and many others.

The deadline to reach full NIMS compliance requirements for Fiscal Year 2005 is September 30th, 2005. Still remaining for Kentucky’s emergency personnel is the completion of the IS-700 course, which explains the purpose, principles, key components and benefits of NIMS. The course also contains “Planning Activities" which give emergency personnel the opportunity to complete some planning tasks during the course.