TAK-Response Conference and Exhibition
America's Answer to Critical Incident Preparedness
By Chief Bobby Halton, Fire Engineering MagazineEvery community has as its primary responsibility the duty to protect and defend its citizens, and accomplishing this responsibility falls to a wide variety of dedicated professionals. Critical incidents occur daily. Depending on the size of the community, the nature of the event, and most significantly the preparedness of the community, a critical incident can be devastating or disruptive. A critical incident is going to require a well-coordinated, prepared, and well-focused response to minimize its effect on the community. No one agency can be expected to resolve or mitigate a critical incident. The very nature of critical incidents requires that multiple agencies including law enforcement, fire, medical, public works, homeland security, administrative, political leadership, faith-based, social services, and state and federal associated agencies be prepared to communicate and coordinate their efforts and resources quickly, effectively, and efficiently. 
Creating this type of synergy without resorting to the need for in-depth reviews of policies and procedures but rather by having preestablished relationships and understandings of how to deploy resources within a highly dynamic and flexible system produces the most effective results. Creating these relationships and developing these understandings to utilize these systems correctly is not optional--it is mandatory. For systems alone, without understanding and relationships, are little more than heaps of paper. To ensure our success when faced with significant challenges, we must provide an organ, a vehicle, an opportunity for all the stakeholders to come together and share, meet, collaborate, and confer on those types of events they are most likely to face. Once a relationship is established and mutual respect and understandings of the other's limitations and capabilities are known, then we are prepared not only for the day-to-day but for the anomaly, for that once-in-a-lifetime event that is going to stretch and test the very limits of our abilities. There are degrees of criticality; we should prepare for those that we are most likely to face, for in that basic preparation lie the seeds of greatness. One cannot foresee the unimaginable, but one can and one must prepare for it.
