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