Michael D. Brown, under secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response, announced today that the nation’s first-responders can now take two new Incident Command System courses online through the Federal Emergency Management Agency Virtual Campus.

“Over 225,000 of our nation’s response personnel have completed Incident Command System and National Incident Management System courses currently available online through the FEMA Virtual Campus,” said Brown. “President Bush directed that a comprehensive National approach to incident management, applicable to all jurisdictional levels across functional disciplines, be developed. I am pleased to announce these new courses which will train our first responders in that National Incident Management System.”

The two courses were jointly developed by FEMA’s U.S. Fire Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Wildfire Coordinating Group. These new courses integrate the NIMS guidelines and meet the NIMS Baseline Training requirements. Q-462 and Q-463 are the first in a series of Incident Command System courses developed in Web-based and blended learning format to meet all-hazards, all-agency NIMS ICS requirements for operational personnel.

Now available are:

Q-462 – Introduction to All-Hazards NIMS ICS for Operational First Responders.  This course is web-based, self-study, interactive and equivalent to NWCG I-100 (Based on standard learning objectives).
   
Q-463 – Basic All-Hazards NIMS ICS for Operational First Responders.  This course is web-based, self-study, interactive and equivalent to NWCG I-200 (Based on standard learning objectives).

Find these two courses at the FEMA Virtual Campus by clicking on “Online Training (NETC Virtual Campus)” on the upper left.

“The U.S. Fire Administration continues to move forward in their efforts to ensure this Nation’s first responders have available to them, the most current ICS body of knowledge,” said USFA Administrator R. David Paulison.  “Our firefighters and first responders face numerous challenges in their communities, and these courses further ensure the effectiveness and safety of our response and recovery responsibilities.”

The USFA and the NIMS Integration Coordinating group recognize the target audience for these ICS courses will have varying degrees of training and experience.  Those personnel with sufficient training and skills may take the final examination, one time, without reviewing the course.  In order to receive credit for completion of each course you must obtain a correct score of 70%t.  Each course in this series builds on the prior course, so they must be satisfactorily completed in order.

USFA and USDA are working together, and coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security’s NIMS Integration Center, to ensure that Incident Command System courses at the 100, 200, 300 and 400 levels are available in various formats and for all emergency response disciplines. These courses are being developed cooperatively, using the same set of learning objectives, and each course recognized by all the involved agencies.