Incident management team


Incident management team is a term used in the United States of America to refer to a group of trained personnel that responds to an emergency. Although the incident management team concept was originally developed for wildfire response, it has been expended into what is now known as "All-Hazards Incident Management Team”. An AHIMT can respond to a wide range of emergencies, including fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunami, riots, spilling of hazardous materials, and other natural or human-caused incidents.
In the United States, there are predominantly five types of incident management teams. An incident such as a wildland fire is initially managed by local fire departments or fire agencies, but if the fire becomes complex additional resources are called in to address the emergency, and higher levels of management training and capability are required. IMTs are "typed" according to the size, scope and complexity of incidents they are capable of managing and are part of an incident command system.
To manage the logistical, fiscal, planning, operational, safety and community issues related to the incident/emergency, an Incident Management Team will provide the command and managament infrastructure that is required.
Incident management starts as the smallest unit and escalates according to the size, scope and complexity of the emergency. The five types of IMTs are as follows:
An incident management team consists of five subsystems as follows: