What role does Preparedness have in NIMS?
Preparedness is essential for effective incident and emergency management and involves engaging in a continuous cycle of planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluating, and taking corrective action to achieve and maintain readiness to respond to emergencies. As such, the NIMS Preparedness Component serves as a baseline concept that links all the NIMS Components. Preparedness spans jurisdictions, governments, agencies and organizations. Though individuals certainly play a critical role in preparedness and are expected to prepare themselves and their families for all types of potential incidents, they are not directly included in NIMS preparedness. NIMS primarily discusses the preparedness role for governments, organizations geared specifically toward preparedness, elected and appointed officials, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. Q: NIMS promotes the use of State and local mutual aid to help local jurisdictions better handle large-scale disasters.
