I'm not sure who hung "NIMS" on the front of the title (probably someone who
thought it would make everything "NIMS Compliant") but as you point out
these books were written long before all this NIMS window-dressing was
thought of. These are the same books that were originally developed by CDF
which were then adopted by the NWCG -- the books are good, IF you ARE a
working wildland fires so that you can have someone sign off that you HAVE
DONE the tasks, but the books don't tell you how to perform the tasks.

As for "NIMS having courses online" there is no such body as NIMS. NIMS is
a program -- a concept of how to manage an incident. It is basically ICS
with a few new titles for a few federal bureaucrats to get promoted for
not-doing the same job they were not-doing under the FRP.

There are no NIMS courses -- there are a few FEMA courses ABOUT NIMS (most
of which are poorly written) There are also a lot of other FEMA courses,
most of which are better written than the newest course materials because
FEMA used to have some professional training developers. Then FEMA was
raped when the whole idea of emergency management training was put under the
National Fire Academy, who does a great job with firefighter training but
treats everything else in terms of
what-does-the-fire-service-do-in-this-situation.

Sorry to sound so negative. There is nothing wrong with NIMS itself. It is
really nothing but ICS. The only problem with "NIMS" is that a great deal
of time and money is being thrown as window-dressing to stamp "NIMS
Compliant" on everything in sight. It is a lot like the situation in 1998 &
1999 when government and industry were spending more money stamping "Y2K
Compliant" on stuff than on really finding and fixing the few computer
programs that had a critical problem.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Warren" <retsquid@...>
To: <NRCEV@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 08:28
Subject: [NRCEV] NATIONAL WILDFIRE COORDINATING GROUP TASK BOOKS


> These following task books are the reason I asked about the online
> NIMS training:
> NIMS TASK BOOK FOR RADIO OPERATOR PMS311-97/NFES2642
> NIMS TASK BOOK FOR INCIDENT COMMUNICATIONS TECHNICIAN PMS311-96/NFES2628
> NIMS TASK BOOK FOR INCIDENT COMMUNICATIONS CENTER MANAGER
> PMS311-41/NFES2351
> NIMS TASK BOOK FOR COMMUNICATION UNIT LEADER PMS311-35/NFES2345
> NIMS TASK BOOK FOR INCIDENT COMMS TECHNICIAN PMS311-96/NFES2628
>
> Several of these publications are fairly new but some are 6 and 7
> years old. Figured by now NIMS would have courses online. If they
> spell out the requirements for qualification then they should also
> teach those requirements. These and other task books at:
>
> National Wildfire Coordinating Group
> http://www.nwcg.gov/pms/taskbook/logistics/logistic.htm
>
> copy and paste
>
>
>
>
> http://www.nrcev.org
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>