FEMA Incident Action Planning Guide (January 2012)

This guide is intended to promote the effectiveness of FEMA incident operations by standardizing the incident action planning process. The guide explains the ICS incident action planning process, describes how FEMA applies it on all FEMA incidents, defines the specific roles and responsibilities of the various players, and establishes standards for incident action planning on FEMA incidents. This guide also communicates to FEMA’s partners the details of how the agency conducts the incident action planning process. This guide is also intended to serve as a reference for incident personnel and to provide the basis for FEMA incident action planning staffing and exercising. Finally, this guide informs the required training, position task books, and development of courses for the positions of the FEMA Qualification System. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) primary mission is to reduce the loss of life and property and protect the Nation from all hazards. When FEMA becomes involved in an incident, it is because the scope and scale of the incident necessitates Federal assistance. When FEMA is engaged, officials from the State and local government are also involved along with nongovernmental organizations (NG0s), elements of the private sector, and—more than likely—other Federal departments and agencies. Ensuring that the efforts of all players are coordinated and synchronized to achieve the best results is the job of incident management. It is also the reason that the National Incident Management System and the Incident Command System (ICS) exist. The incident action planning process provides a tool to synchronize operations at the incident level and ensures that incident operations are conducted in support of incident objectives. The iterative incident action planning process provides FEMA and all interagency partners involved in incident management operations the primary tool for managing incidents. A disciplined system of planning phases and collaboration sessions fosters partnerships and clearly focuses incident operations. Because incidents in which FEMA is engaged are complex and intergovernmental and interagency, applying the incident action planning process accurately, consistently, and completely is essential to the success of incident operations. Disciplined application of the incident action planning process produces positive effects on incidents of all size and scope and maintains the otherwise perishable planning skills of FEMA personnel. While the process described in this guide outlines how FEMA as a part of the whole community executes incident action planning, those involved in a FEMA response and recovery must recognize that it will, in all probability, not be the only incident action planning process being executed. For example, local and municipal organizations may develop IAPs to guide the actions of first responders. For a catastrophic incident there may be hundreds of concurrent incident action planning efforts taking place simultaneously. The joint IAP that State and Federal incident management personnel develop must support all local IAPs and synchronize those at the State and Federal level.