The National Incident Management System (NIMS) was determined to be the solution to challenges of command, communication, coordination, cooperation and resource management at major disaster in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  Someone made the leap of faith that  a “system” or process failed us, not people.  I would agree that adoption of some of the concepts in NIMS will help with some issues, but the real answer lies in people, and leadership specifically.  Communism sounds like a great idea, if people would all work to the same degree and accept the same compensation and lifestyle, and therein lies the problem.

We currently place higher value on individual rights then the right of the common good, and agencies are no different.  Use of the NIMS depends upon agencies agreeing to give us some of their individualism to benefit the common good.  A noble goal, but challenging as long as people in leadership are unwilling to embrace change, giving up some of their individuality and tradition. This may never happen as it may cost too much to train everyone in NIMS and it is primarily for those low probability but high consequence event. But next time a major event hits us, lets not pretend that a “system” failed us, it was leadership.