Who, or which agency has incident command in events involving terrorist activities? It's a debate, perhaps even a down right fight, going on in such places as New York City where cops and firefighters annually beat each other up in hockey and football games.
Peter Hayden, Chief of Department, FDNY, speaking at the annual Fire Department Instructors Conference (FDIC) now going on in Indianapolis, brought his tale to the audience of opening ceremonies Wednesday.
His argument that fire departments are the logical command group in all such incidents got him to the point where the New York Times suggested he "had fallen on his sword in a City Council hearing", when he "said that that the city's new emergency protocol signed by Mayor Bloomberg a month earlier was unsafe for residents and firefighters alike." The Mayor's plan had given command to the police department.
The logic Hayden outlined came from his experience September 11, 2001 when at the World Trade Center he experienced the command problems, co-ordination problems, failure to share information.
In March of 2002 Hayden went to work on the McKinsey Report to develop recommendations for change to enhance the FDNY's preparedness for terrorism acts. "I was determined this was not going to happen again, the lack of communications, the lack of information sharing."
The report focus soon came to highlight issues with incident command and how to strengthen it. And a development from this was to deploy a system for the whole city. It was a system where all the agencies would know there responsibilities and work together in managing the situation. "What happened in 9-11, as the crisis got worse, agencies, groups and individuals tended to focus on what was most important to them. There was no sharing of information, it became vertical stovepiping."
Hayden said the fire department was the only one doing incident command and they were the logical ones to handle an agency wide system. But the police department said there was no need for it in the city. Or if there was an incident, with 40,000 police officers they certainly would be able to take control.
This then is Hayden's logic. They looked at their core competencies, the things the fire department does every day. Fires, EMS, HazMat, building collapse, search and rescue, mass causalities. These are the things they are trained to do and committed to do.
Homeland Security came along and said New York City needs a National Incident Management System. So a report went to the city council, listing all the core competencies of the fire department and the logic of the incident command coming from the department. The responsibility of life safety has always belonged to the fire department.
But in the final document adopted by the mayor and city council, incident command was given to the police department. The fire department would be relegated to operations only.
"If it was a terrorist attack, as was 9-11, there was a fire, there was an explosion, there was a HazMat incident, the jet fuel, there was a building collapse, there were search and rescue and mass causalities. Every one of those elements are the core competencies of the fire service, not the police department. This is what we do. Why are we not incident command?"
Hayden went public with his complaint. "I said the way this document was constructed, this was a recipe for disaster," he said. "I needed to speak out because the emergency action plan and the CIMS, the way it was constructed, was doomed to fail. That there were no lessons learned from 9-11. That the way the document was written, we would have a repeat of 9-11."
That was Hayden falling on his sword. "I knew when I testified, nothing was really going to change. But I did stand up for the department."
"The chief of the department of FDNY is to represent his department. As chiefs in every department, that's your job. And the needs and the best interests of the department are not always the same interest of the city administration. That is why you need to speak out. I am glad I did what I did. I will always speak out for the safety of firefighters everywhere."
The New York Times noted. "the chief of department will no longer be a Civil Service position requiring a test. Instead, it will be a political appointment of the fire commissioner, himself a political appointee."
