[MRIC] ICS-213

[BrettHam at aol.com]

Ray,

Thank you for the time you put into  thinking this through. You have some 
good suggestions. Before I go any further,  one point of clarification: I am not 
in charge of changing ICS-213. We are all  at MRIC, as a group, charged with 
the responsibility for creating a format we  can all live with. It is one of 
the tasks listed in our Charter. As Chairman, I  am pushing hard to try to get 
SOMETHING approved by the next meeting so the  EMs can bless it at their 
Association meeting the following month.

I hope  you and Al do not mind that I forwarded your preceding email to the 
MRIC email  reflector. I think you both raise some very good issues worth 
considering and  all the other ROs need to be thinking about them as well. You two 
shouldn't be  stuck doing all the hard work.

Personally, I agree with the fields you  want to add, I agree with your 
reasoning and feel the same way, but I am willing  to use whatever form is approved 
by MRIC in order to be interoperable. I think  most people might want to stay 
as close to the standard ICS-213 as possible and  omit your suggestions, but 
I would be willing to bet the Emergency Managers  (EMs) from all jurisdictions 
(including MEMA) will give their blessing to  whatever we agree to at MRIC. 
Keep in mind, that the proposed changes we should  be talking about, should 
first be discussed with our EMs. I hope no one is  suggesting anything that does 
not have the blessing of their own  jurisdiction.

Al has gone out on a limb, shown a great deal of leadership  and spent a lot 
of time to create and propose a modified ICS-213 to MRIC at our  first 
meeting. I applaud his efforts. We all should be putting in as much  effort. He also 
proposed instructions and gave us an opportunity to try it  out tonight during 
our RACES drill. This was a good learning experience for us  in Talbot County 
and I think, as a result, we are all much closer to a solution  than last 
week. However, we need to hear feedback from everyone on how we all  want to 
refine ICS-213, the instructions, and our procedures.

Regarding  procedures, I personally agree with you and would like think 
through the whole  procedure before we approve anything, so please share with the 
rest of us what  you have found out about procedures used by other 
jurisdictions. I also like the  idea of multi-part forms, so we can keep carbon copies of 
all messages we hand  off to our EOC. Ultimately, Al is correct in that the 
procedure is up to each  jurisdiction, however, my planner, EM, and I would 
benefit from anything you can  share with us in that regard. I am an ICS-213 
novice, as are they.

In the  next few days, after I have a chance to discuss this with my Planner 
and EM, I  will send out an email of the lessons learned in Talbot from using 
Al's ICS-213  for the drill tonight, along with my own suggested improvements 
to ICS-213 and  the instructions, for discussion. I hope to hear the same from 
ALL other ROs.  Let's get cracking! We want to have a final vote next month, 
so let's get the  issues resolved now.

Ray, thanks again for the time and thoughtfulness  you put into this subject. 
I look forward to hearing more from you about what  you have learned 
regarding procedures. If you have any procedures in writing  that we can steal and use 
in Talbot, it would be much  appreciated.

Sincerely,

Brett Hammond
MRIC Chairman, Talbot RO  

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