Yesterday I had a mandatory National Incident Management System meeting. This meeting was meant to broadly explain what FEMA and Homeland Security have been doing to justify their jobs and pretend like their on the ball getting procedures all worked out trying to show that they were not to blame for Katrina. So NIMS (National Incident Management System) is what we get. When I heard this I just kept thinking about the children’s book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, unfortunately they have nothing to do with one another…if they had I may have been able to stay more alert.

What took two hours of repetitive acronyms and 81 slides – I can sum up in one sentence. NIMS is to be the guidelines for the coordinated response to national disasters, which requires extra acronyms and 81 slides in order to tell the general public that it would be great to have a standardize language for response teams to use that is separate from their regular work jargon.

At the beginning of this lecture the woman told us that there would be a test at the end, but that we would all pass it (nudge nudge wink wink), so I didn’t pay much attention, except to notice that this was made to sound extremely well thought out and important to us all by the use of confusing acronyms, which I just feel like I just can’t mention enough.

On slide nine (I have a paper copy with me) we have:

NIMS Standard Structions
Incident Command System (ICS)
Multiagency Coordination Systems (MACS)
Public Information Systems

No acronym for this last one. I guess PIS isn’t appropriate?

Slide ten:

NIMS’ Role in Preparedness
Planning, training, and exercises (NIC)
Personal qualification and certification (NIC)
Equipment acquisition and certification (NIC)
Publication management (NIC)
Mutual aid / Emergency Management Assistance Compacts
*NIC=NIMS Integration Center

Wait wait just a minute…why wasn’t NIC listed under slide nine if it’s under NIMS? I’m all confused I thought NIMS was the integration system that was going to be used to make communication simple…why does NIMS need a separate integration center – isn’t that what FEMA is? Oh never mind I’ll just go back to sleep.

After an overview of the “information” we move on to the 25 question test, which will allow us to all become NIMS certified. The lady told us that we’ll even get our certificate mailed to us if we put down our SSN on the answer sheet. She then reminds us that this was a required class, indicating that we needed to show proof to our employer that we actually took it. One of my co-workers asked, “uuhh isn’t that what the sign in sheet was for?”

“Well yes, but you’ll want your certificate to show you completed the class.”

“But we’re taking the test and will pass that..? What is the certificate for?”

“Well if a national disaster ever happens and they want to pick people to send to help, you’ll need it to head up a team.”

My co-worker and I both left the SSN spot blank. I’m not a police officer, national guardsman, fire fighter, paramedic, nurse or doctor, and there is good reason why I didn’t choose any of those fields. I don’t want to fucking do it!! Moving on…

As the facilitator read each test question she moved around the room selecting a different person to answer each one and then giving us the correct answer if necessary. She then read #13. She said that number 13 was particularly confusing and that two answers are equally good, but only one is actually accepted. She of course wound up having to tell us which one was the more correct between the two equally correct answers. It was the same for number 21 and I believe the third one was number 23, which she said, when she took her test she obtained her correct answer from one government source while a colleague received their correct answer from a different government source. Sounds like this standardization stuff really works. I feel ready for anything now!

Related posts: