Effective situational awareness ensures that the interpretation reflects the actual situation. This is critical for making appropriate decisions and predicting the likely effects of activities.
Command skills are the cognitive and interpersonal qualities critical for assertive, effective and safe incident command.
Operational discretion relates to rare or exceptional circumstances where strictly following an operational procedure would be a barrier to resolving an incident, or where there is no procedure that adequately deals with the incident. Commanders need to be sufficiently aware of procedures, the skills and qualities of crew members, and the capability of resources available.
A response to persistent, poorly managed pressures usually over a prolonged period of time. Such stress may lead to serious health conditions such as anxiety, insomnia, and high blood pressure.
A reaction to sudden, unexpected events such as those that may be experienced when working in a dynamic, high-risk environment when commanding an incident. Such stress will involve significant physiological and psychological effects akin to the fight, flight or freeze responses observed in animals.
Operations often take place in more than one location during an incident for example, at the front and rear of a building. In such cases the incident commander’s span of control may only be limited. Where an incident commander has the ability to monitor tasks by moving around the incident ground it is unlikely that sectors are needed. However, if the incident commander is unable to effectively manage operations and supervise safety at more than one location, then sectorisation should be considered.
There is a balance between ensuring firefighter safety and carrying out the role of the fire and rescue service. This is known as the Firefighter Safety Maxim, and is as follows:
“At every incident the greater the potential benefit of fire and rescue actions, the greater the risk that is accepted by commanders and firefighters. Activities that present a high risk to safety are limited to those that have the potential to save life or to prevent rapid and significant escalation of the incident.”
Crews are working within the designated hazard area and thereby, exposed to greater risk.
Crews are outside of the designated hazard area.
