City leaders prepare for emergency management

Mattison said that while city leaders may not be actively involved at the scene of a major emergency, they do assist by providing financial and administrative support.

The National Incident Management System (NIMS), a federally mandated incident management process, requires that all public safety personnel and elected officials be trained to use standard command structures and incorporate NIMS components in their emergency planning and training.

Monday afternoon, Winder city leaders participated in the NIMS executive course.

The NIMS executive course is designed to outline the responsibilities of city leaders in times of crisis.

Mattison presented the hour long training session.

“[NIMS] is just a systematic way of taking chaos out of an emergency,” he said.

NIMS is a standardized onscene management concept that originated in the 1960s in California, Mattison explained. After a series of forest fires, emergency personnel recognized the need for a unified command structure and created what is now known as the Incident Command System (ICS).

NIMS uses the Incident Command System, but is designed to allow users to adopt a command structure suitable to the complexity and scope of the emergency. The primary purpose of NIMS is to provide a mechanism by which various departments and agencies can operate with each other in the event of a major incident crossing jurisdictional boundaries.

State and local governments must be in compliance with NIMS regulations in order to receive federal aid.