>> There are no NIMS courses -- there are a few
>> FEMA courses ABOUT NIMS
> Hello Tom,
> Wow, you sure seem to be anti FEMA. Of course that is a popular position
> now.

Quite the contrary -- I am a strong supporter of FEMA -- my objections are
to many of the things that have been done TO FEMA since the total
politicalization of the federal role in emergency response.

> I think that "FEMA Independent Study Program:
> IS-700 National Incident Management System (NIMS),
> An Introduction" would qualify as an NIMS course.

My point was that there is no such THING as NIMS -- and especially that
there is no agency or organization called NIMS that develops or presents
training. There are courses about NIMS that were written (poorly) by
contractors hired by FEMA and there are courses about NIMS (some good, some
not) that were written by or for various state emergency management
agencies. Most important to the original thread (about emergency
communications training) there is no such thing as a "NIMS Course" for ANY
duty position. There are courses about NIMS and there are courses about
various duty positions, but every course is written and presented by some
agency, not by any mythical "NIMS" itself.

> But, of course you are right that NIMS is the overall system and
> that ICS is how that is applied. While I was attending the National
> Emergency Training Center (NETC is shared by the United States
> Fire Administration (USFA), the National Fire Academy (NFA),
> the Emergency Management Institute (EMI), the Field Personnel
> Operations Division, and the Satellite Procurement Office. All
> these components are part of FEMA, one of the four directorates
> in DHA) at Emittsburg, MD last summer that told us that NWCG,
> FEMA and others were working at finalizing the merging of the ICS
> courses so that when taught by Wildland fire group or by a FEMA
> trainer that the students would receive the same basic material.

That is gospel.

> You say "when the whole idea of emergency management training
> was put under the National Fire Academy". The NETC EMI Resident
> Courses catalog and application are still showing courses being taught
> by FEMA. So are you saying that these will change and start being
> taught by NFA staff?

No, there are still a handful of "FEMA" instructors but there are no FEMA
training developers. The lack of training developers is (mostly) indirectly
related to the fact that NFA is running the show. A while back DHS decided
to "improve" (which in fed-speak means make cheaper) emergency management
training by "consolidating" EMI and NFA -- but of course the consolidated
organization would be smaller than the total of the organizations being
consolidated and the consolidated organization could have only one boss.
The boss of the new consolidated training organization was the boss of the
NFA. Guess which staff took the most cuts in when all the "duplicate"
positions were being deleted?

You have to realize that emergency management is towards the bottom of the
priority list at DHS -- so emergency management related programs (i.e. FEMA)
is where most of the cuts have come.

Then you need to understand how cuts are applied in the federal workforce
The #1 priority to always protect are the people who manage the workers
doing the function
The #2 priority are the workers who do the function
The #3 priority are the trainers who teach the workers how to perform the
function (you don't need much training when you aren't hiring any new
workers)
The last priority (and therefore the first people cut) are the people who
write the training materials.

If you cut training, the negative impact will generally not show up for 2-3
years. This is usually long enough for the people who directed the cuts to
get their bonus for saving money by cutting the training and move up to a
bigger office with an even higher salary and fancier title.

If you cut training development, the impact won't show up for 3-6 years.
This is always long enough for it to be someone else's problem.