Actions and Procedures at a Multi-agency Critical Incident Response

Final Essay Instructions

This is a comprehensive essay written in APA style. Students are expected to be competent in a community-wide response system with the expectation to be competent in multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional response and the ability to initiate the disaster declaration process. You need to be able to articulate a clear and thorough understanding of all of these aspects of critical incident response and support your writing with scholarly references.

Foundation for the Essay

This is a two-part assignment with two Dropbox requirements. First, for the essay, you have been given the responsibility to conduct a community presentation on the following information (see Essay Essentials). Your essay is an explanation of your department’s plan (organizationally and with inter-agency coordination) to respond to a critical incident. You should be writing this essay in the context of it becoming a document that is read by the community members and business leaders who will be your audience. Your credibility (and that of your department) will be judged by your ability to clearly and thoroughly articulate information to your audience. If you are talking about the tactical assignments of law enforcement, fire, and/or emergency medical services without the broader picture, you have missed the intent of this course and this assignment.

Second, create an agenda meeting style presentation based on your essay. Your document should be no more than one page in large font. Typically, a presentation of this sort is done at civic organization meetings where a guest speaker makes a presentation. Be sure to limit your information to 15 minutes. Talk as if you are talking to a group of community members and business leaders. This is essentially a one-page document you give your department leader to present to a civic organization meeting (like a city council meeting).  Think of this as a one-page document that the president has on their podium to talk about a topic you know a lot about and they know a little, but they have to give the presentation.

A note about plagiarism. First, when you insert your incident command system charts to the appendix, do not copy from another source – create your own. They do not have to be fancy. Simple Smart Art or shapes/lines available in Microsoft Word will work just fine. You need to display the hierarchy of your incident command system structure for at least two different incident types. Second, when making your PowerPoint, you can copy and paste from your essay to the note pages. This is not plagiarism; it is your information that you are presenting directly from your essay. It is considered to be the same assignment.

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Essay Essentials

Your report should include the following pages:
Ø Standard ERA title page;
Ø Abstract;
Ø The essay itself; (see rubric for word count); and
Ø Reference page with a minimum of four peer-reviewed, scholarly sources.

Over the semester you have learned about multi-agency response to critical incidents. Do not just state simple facts about critical incident response. Your essay should be written in the context of a detailed explanation about the actions and procedures at a multi-agency critical incident response where decisions are made about the response at the scene. You should be answering (1) who will be called to assist, (2) what are the agency responsibilities, and (3) how will all the agencies cooperate. Additionally, you need to answer the following:

• ü  Explain what strategic-level decisions are made at a critical incident.
• ü  Describe the different agency responsibilities during a critical incident.
• ü  Describe some success and failure points in a critical incident response.
• ü  Explain how the disaster declaration process is initiated at the scene and what is the progression of notification for assistance occurs to the federal level.
• ü  Describe your plan of action (as a front-line crew supervisor of a district) when a critical incident occurs.

These elements need to be supported with proof. Look for policies, statutes, and best practices. Your position on each of these elements needs to be detailed, and articulated in a well thought out manner. Remember, this is a high-level strategic view of critical incident response. Do not include the tactical considerations at the unit level.

Summary

Please ask questions early if you do not understand any aspect of this assignment. Use the Open Forum to post general questions about this assignment, as your question(s) may help others. The real-world application of this incident is significant, and will help prepare you for work-related situations where you must be able to clearly articulate competency in handling administrative duties. You will be graded in this course, and in the real world, on how well you perform these functions. I recommend you have this essay submitted five days before the deadline so you may use the Turnitin.com feature to evaluate your percentage score and have time to edit. Submitting early will prevent last minute circumstances from affecting your ability to meet the deadline and demonstrate your professional approach to this assignment.

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