Common Terminology: Incident Command System

Part one :

-Common terminology: it is one of the main and most important component of any incident command system, it should be used in all mass casualty incident that involve multiagencies or multi jurisdictions to avoid confusion between the agencies involved in the incident. For example, the Saudi red crescent uses specific numbers as codes that have a certain meaning, but other agencies are not familiar with these codes and their meanings. So when an incident happens Saudi red crescent personnel should use a plain and clear language in and out of the incident to avoid any confusion that may put other people lives at danger and at worst it may lead to a Line of duty death (LODD). Common terminology is vitally important to each component

The incident might expand and get more complicated, and as that happens agencies should put all their effort under the unified command, which is better than working agency by agency under different plan which will make the work random and cause more confusion. For example: if we had an mass casualty incident that involved multi agencies, and they worked unsystematically, we will see a lot of duplication in efforts, a lot of necessary things will not be achieved, and their will be no well known objectives to be achieved. The unified command should work along with other principles of incident command system such as the common terminology, if we used the common terminology without an effective unified command plan our incident response will not be effective, because the incident command system principles should work together, as I said previously each principle is vitally important on its own, but we should use them together to achieve an excellent incident

It depends on the incident that we are facing. If it was an incident that involves multi jurisdictions, and the incident will last for more than twelve hours, or if we have activated multiple agencies, then we should have a formal incident action plan. The formal incident action plan will support the incident commander with a well-known objective which will be easier to achieve with a written incident action plan, it will provide the incident commander with a base line to help measuring the effectiveness of the plan and the