Colleton County Fire-Rescue

11/26/2008

A Tender by any other name .............. Well, it still hauls water!
 
As many of you are aware, we have had a great number of people attending the NIMS (National Incident Management System) Training over the past several years. The National effort to bring other emergency agencies and many non-emergency agencies into a standardized Incident Management System has been a daunting task at the Federal level. The Fire Service has used a similar system for many decades and the newer model, NIMS, is not much different on the surface, than what we have been doing in Fire-Rescue since the department was created 15 years ago. One of the best parts of the NIMS System is the standardization of terms and the classification of equipment from dump trucks to ARFF trucks. In this way, if we are called to assist another agency, like in the mid-west we will refer to the equipment in the same manner. The same is true, if let's say a California Fire Department was to come to South Carolina to assist us with a hurricane recovery or other disaster.
 
Most of the terms in the Fire Service are already standardized, so changes for us are not great. However, the term Tanker under NIMS refers to an Air Tanker (Water Bomber, very old term) as widely used on the West Coast. The
vehicle we use to transport water for firefighting efforts is referred to as a TENDER. To bring our department in line to the national standard and match the resource list, we will be changing the "Tanker" Designation to "Tender" effective with this posting.