Libraries, Archives, Museums: Preparing Alaska's Cultural Organizations for Emergencies Course: Module 3: Incident Command System for Cultural Organizations

Module 3

Understand the basic concepts of the structure and function of ICS;
Understand how ICS functions at the community-wide and institution level;
Understand the flexibility of ICS;
Understand the roles and responsibilities of the Incident Commander and various ICS positions;
Understand Chain of Command and Span of Control

Module 3 Introduction
Read this introduction about how to use ICS in your organization.
Communications Planning
All that you need to consider to assure there are smooth communications during response and recovery efforts.
Response Team Jobs
A description of ICS positions for cultural orgs.

Implementing the Incident Command System at the Repository Level with David Carmicheal (55 min)
David Carmicheal, Pennsylvania’s State Archivist, who is the author of Implementing the Incident Command System at the Institutional Level: A Handbook for Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Other Cultural Institutions, has graciously allowed us to post his approximately 50 minute introductory course to the ICS. It is an excellent talk that will help translate the ICS-100 into cultural institution user-friendly terminology and understandability. This talk is in addition to, NOT a substitute for ICS-100.

ICS for Heritage & Cultural Institutions (28 min)
Jared Yax, a Firefighter and Collections Curator for the Tri-Cities Museum in Grand Haven, Michigan, was the IC for museum response in Midland, Michigan after the Sanford Lake Dam failure in May 2020. He is also trained in the Smithsonian’s Heritage Emergency and Response Training (HEART).

If you have not already done so, please take Introduction to the Incident Command System, ICS 100
- Download the Student Workbook which contains, amongst a lot of other good information, an excellent Glossary on pages 29-41. Everybody in your institution should take this course. When finished, you will likely feel as though you have been dumped into the Wildland Firefighter world. After all, the ICS was originally developed so multiple agencies with hundreds of personnel could easily work together: when deployed, you can jump right into the system because you know exactly how things are run.
Read Field Guide to Emergency Response Section II (p 9-34)
Recruit and make assignments for your Core Response Team. These are people who will fill your Incident Command System positions during emergency response and recovery. See the Templates & Forms tab for some templates that can help you with this.

Begin developing a Communications Plan for effective communication amongst workers during an incident; communicating with other emergency organizations; and releasing information to the public.
Practice ICS by using it to plan an event.
Read this Ready Freddy Scenario, which shows how ICS is mobilized and then demobilized to respond to a fire at a cultural organization.

Ready Freddy Org Scenario
This scenario shows how ICS was used to respond to recovering from a fire at a cultural organization.

The FEMA Emergency Management Institute contains links to a wide variety of courses from risk assessment to grants. Several are relevant to this course including the Public Information Officer training.
FEMA Incident forms
If you are interested in photos and the media perspective of the Sanford Lake Dam failure (the Midland, MI flood that Jared talks about), visit the following:
- When the Dams Broke in Midland, Michigan - Belt Magazine (7/17/2020)
  Historic Flooding Left Part of Michigan History Underwater - Detroit Free Press (6/22/2020)
  Saving History: Volunteers Work to Save Doan History Center and Heritage Park - Catalyst Midland (6/4/2020)
  Historical Triage: Museum Curators Race Against Time to Preserve Museum - Traverse City Record Eagle (5/32/2020)
  Midland Museum Seeks Volunteers to Help Save Artifacts Damaged by Flood - Live (5/23/2020)