What are the essential roles and responsibilities of an incident commander?

An incident commander oversees the response, sets objectives, coordinates resources, and makes critical decisions, like a fire chief directing a team during a major blaze.

The best work with their management team to set objectives using a full team approach. Fortunately, this is what you should see most of the time. What ICs must do - often together with planning, information, risk and liaison - is set priority to the objectives, which may shift constantly throughout the operational period. However, sometimes, it is a decision they must make independently if it is urgent.

The IC does define the goals with input (communication, cooperation, coordination) with ALL stakeholders. Strategies and tactics follow to accomplish the goals of ALL stakeholders. AND the prime tasks of the IMT is to "manage-the-Operation" ... ie. Logistics and Planning (Comms, PIO, Facilities, Supply, transportation, document and brief the operational period, etc...). Operations takes care of their specialty ... "why are we here". ALL sections MUST agree on the plan for an operational period. That can be a single agency (Type 3-4 incident) or multiple agencies Type 2 and larger in a mutual aid situation.) This process is far from this simple but it may define the 30K foot perspective to get started.

The ICS structure is made up the Incident Commander, the Command Staff who directly support the Incident Commander in ensuring safety, engaging the public and or the media, and interacting with other agencies/organizations (Safety Officer, Public Information Officer, and the Liaison Officer), and the General Staff who help contain the incident and achieve the incident objectives (Operations Section, Planning Section, Logistics Section, and Finance/Administration Section).

The IC is responsible for communication within the ICS team, especially with the management team and, often, elected officials. They will also communicate directly with other ICs or leads of organizations, especially when influence is needed. Broad internal and external (two-way) communication is the role of the Public Information Officer (PIO), who is directly connected to the IC and should be present for decisions and strategy meetings as part of the core or whole management team. Your IO will support you by gathering media, social media, public engagement, and political perspectives for the decision table. By involving the PIO, you will reduce or eliminate much of the tension that may be unnecessarily created during response.

The best leaders in emergencies are those who are constantly evaluating and updating the plan to eliminate and reduce the impact that the "known risks", the "known unknowns", and the "unknown unknowns" of the response operations. Risk is inherent in any operation, but emergency events layer additional levels of uncertainty and vulnerability over the "known risks" that are found when performing practice runs, checking inventories, planning response routes, or establishing communication methods. The "known unknown" risks may be personnel or equipment availability, or site specific hazards. And then there are the "unknown unknowns" of what caused the emergency, what incidents may happen DURING the incident response, or even outside factors.

Wrong decisions happen in emergencies often, as we do not benefit from hindsight. The best ICs I have worked with are always thinking about the impact on people and never groupthink. The worst are authoritarians, who will never take responsibility for decisions which end badly, regularly focus on themselves, and groupthink with most decisions. Mean work is scream work, and teamwork is dream work. An IC who works to ensure the best available people are in the proper role at the right time, all while new people are getting experience and fresh people and resources, are being ordered, will be strongly supported by a team. Your most important role as an IC is continually building and fostering a strong team environment.

Can you learn from hindsight by conducting an After Action Review immediately after the incident? Can you analyze what worked and why, what didn’t work and why. Review policies, processes, procedures. You could then brainstorm ways to improve or change or test the current way things are done and learn and improve every time. This would also build institutional knowledge, skill, and a sense of team and belonging.