Thorndale Officers and Firefighters Complete ICS-300 and ICS-400 Training
By Captain Daniel Donnachie
January 25, 2010
Over the past two weekends several officers and firefighters completed two separate advanced incident command training classes that were hosted by the Lionville Fire Company in conjunction with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Counter Terrorism Task Force and the Harrisburg Area Community College. These courses were taught by Instructor Tim Campbell, past Director of Emergency Services for Chester County and Instructor Bill Shouldis, past Deputy Chief of the Philadelphia Fire Department. The ICS (Incident Command System) courses were developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the United State Department of Homeland Security, and the National Fire Academy in cooperation with the United States Fire Administration. These courses were developed to train emergency response personnel on the standards of the nationally recognized Incident Command System to prepare them to serve as possible incident commanders that will manage large scale incidents involving multiple agencies across multiple jurisdictions.
Beginning on Thursday January 14th, ten members attended a 24 hour course titled "ICS-300 Intermediate ICS for Expanding Incidents". This ICS course covered proper staffing and organization of the command structure, information flow and working relationships, transfer of command, unified command functions in multi-jurisdictional or multi-agency incidents, managing resources, inter-agency mission planning, and how to complete several ICS forms. The content was presented in a lecture format; however several group exercises were completed throughout the course to demonstrate the skills. The class concluded on Sunday January 17th with a written test on the course content.
The second class began on Saturday January 23rd with eight members attending "ICS-400 Advanced ICS Command and General Staff—Complex Incidents". This ICS course covered the role of Command and General Staff, the role of Deputies and Assistants, implementation of unified command, and the organizational relationships between Area Command, Unified Command, Multi-Entity Coordination Systems, and Emergency Operations Centers. As in the ICS-300 course, the content was presented in lecture format with several group exercises that built on themselves to show how all the skills learned would be applied. This class concluded on Sunday January 24th with a written test on the course content as well.
ICS-300: Chief Don Taylor Assistant Chief Vince D'Amico Captain Dan Donnachie Lieutenant Andrae Reason Lieutenant John Groff Lieutenant Ed Ranck Jr. Firefighter John Cordisco Firefighter Regina Solecki Firefighter/EMT Sean Taylor Firefighter/EMT Kevin Kistler
ICS-400: Chief Don Taylor Assistant Chief Vince D'Amico Captain Dan Donnachie Lieutenant John Groff Lieutenant Ed Ranck Jr. Firefighter John Cordisco Firefighter/EMT Sean Taylor Firefighter/EMT Kevin Kistler
At the end of these two courses, the Officers and Firefighters listed above completed a combined total of 368 training hours for our fire company. Thank you to all the Officers and Firefighters who gave up their weekends and evenings to attend these courses.
A special thanks to the Lionville Fire Company for hosting these two classes and for the outstanding hospitality, which included coffee and donuts every morning.
