Using the Incident Command System to Forge Partnerships, Build Bridges, and Break Barriers

The NWS Weather Forecast Office (WFO) in Eureka, California uses the Incident Command System (ICS) to run their operations for a broad range of high impact events as well as for daily operations. The use of ICS has produced significant internal and external benefits. Internally, ICS helps ensure that significant staff resources are focused on providing Impact Based Decision Support Services (IDSS). This results from the many ICS roles that are aligned with providing IDSS, such as the Liaison Officer who coordinates the provision of IDSS to partner agencies, the Public Information Officer who ensures message consistency across all ICS functions, and the Planning Section Chief who ensures the needed staff resources are available for both forecast/warning functions and IDSS functions. If the provision of IDSS involves the deployment of staff to partner operations centers, then the Safety Officer and Logistics Section Chief ensure that any needed travel is safe to conduct and that any logistics are addressed such as laptops, phones, cars, hotels, etc. Finally the Finance Section Chief ensures that travel funding is available. These functions related to arranging service delivery are typically associated with “work week” positions in a WFO, such as Meteorologist In Charge, Warning Coordination Meteorologist, and Administrative Services Assistant. WFO Eureka’s use of ICS has resulted in many staff members being trained and certified to perform these critical service delivery functions. The goal is to adopt a command structure and to cultivate a culture that places a high priority on all the activities associated with providing IDSS.

ICS has also allowed the staff to rapidly expand operations to meet the demands of escalating events. This is facilitated by two aspects of ICS. First, ICS encourages capacity building by cross training all staff on many different positions within the ICS structure, including those associated with forecast and warnings and those associated with the delivery of IDSS. This ensures that there are adequate qualified staff members available for both the forecast/warning roles and the IDSS roles during rapid expansion. This aspect of ICS is not really new with regards to the forecast/warning role. Many WFOs have always had excellent severe weather operating plans that result in a rapid expansion of forecast and warning operations. However, there is significant and growing additional workload associated with the coordination and delivery of IDSS. This is partly due to increasing demands for life-saving products and services from a widening spectrum of the entities. Providing these services requires a diverse set of skills. ICS provides both the positions and the framework to ensure that adequate staff resources are dedicated to the coordination and delivery of IDSS during expansion. This results in a reproducible approach to expansion that can be practiced, which has resulted in a much more forward leaning stance regarding service delivery during real events.

The second way that ICS supports rapid expansion during escalating events is that it is fundamentally designed to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks during expansion. This is accomplished through the core tenets that make up ICS, such as “unity of command” that ensures that everyone only reports to one person, and “span of control” that ensures that nobody is asked to keep track of the work of too many people. ICS also employs the concept of modularization whereby complex work is subdivided and assigned so that everyone within the ICS knows what they are doing and can focus on their tasks. Collectively, these tenets result in a very efficient command structure that also ensures that everyone has the clarity of mind to maintain situational awareness. Of course, any other command structure can also employ these tenets, but they are integral to ICS and they have been honed through the use of ICS during thousands of events nationwide over several decades.

Externally, the use of ICS has significantly improved the office’s ability to understand and communicate with the operational centers of our federal, state, tribal, and local partners, who all use ICS. This is critical to breaking down cultural barriers that exist between the NWS and their partners. All NWS operational staff members are already required to take ICS online courses and NWS incident meteorologists are well versed in ICS because they use it when deployed. NWS Eureka has taken this further by having all staff use ICS on a daily basis and for expanded events. This has resulted in the ability of any staff member to engage with core partners with an understanding of their operations, their language, and their culture.

WFO Eureka’s full adoption of ICS has been a multi-year effort that began with the simple goal of using the same system used by the partner agencies we serve as a way to remove cultural and language barriers. It has become clear that there are many internal benefits that have collectively shifted the entire office culture to one that places a high priority on the coordination and delivery of IDSS to the agencies that depend on us. This helps the WFO serve those partner agencies more effectively and thereby helps those partners serve the diverse populations they are responsible for.