Improvised Incident Response: A Primer

right now things in the world are moving pretty fast and as people have less and less free time to be able to learn new skills a lot of time people ask what's the point of learning something what is the point of learning about intelligence preparation of the battle space what's the point of figuring out how to battle track and why would I invest any money whatsoever in a ham radio setup and perhaps most importantly why would I care about anything that occurs outside of my local area why would I want to pay attention to any news that isn't local to me sometimes it's pretty hard to understand how a lot of this stuff comes together to actually be productive in a contingent situation and right up front the answer is to why you might want to learn some of this information and why you might want to practice some of these skills is to answer the question what do I do when something happens how can I use intelligence preparation of the battle space to help me out during a contingent situation in what situations would a electronic listening post work out and why should I be monitoring aircraft all of this can be answered by going over the subject of basic incident response now the concept of incident response what to do when there's a crisis or some kind of incident as a prepared citizen is very wide- ranging and we're really in Uncharted Territory so there aren't a whole lot of manuals to lean on however we do have one field of study that we can lean on for a bit of guidance here and there and that is the incident command system that is used by first responding agencies all around the United States the incident command system is basically a how-to guide for First Responders that helps them figure out how to manage a crisis there are five main areas of the incident command system command operations planning Logistics and finance and administration now ironically enough the incident command system is supposed to be a shared form of understanding a a handbook for Success when it comes to our nation's emergency responders however if you Google the incident command system you will find a couple of handbooks here and there a couple of doctrinal Publications but by and large the way that that the incident command system is taught in varying jurisdictions and in various career Fields varies extremely widely you really have to look long and hard to find a stepbystep process of how to manage a crisis that actually matches with anybody else everyone does the incident command system differently with the exception of maybe how to set up the command structure itself so for Simplicity sake and so that we can be grounded in a good foundation of actual like research and Doctrine let's take a random document from the West Virginia Department of Education this two-page document produced probably by an unpaid intern actually outlines these six steps of the incident command system and what to do in a crisis but most importantly it does it from a perspective that is actually conducive to being used by a prepared citizenry instead of a large first responder government agency this can actually be used by everyone at home so let's briefly run through these six steps that the West Virginia Department of of Education outlines as part of the IC process I know this is super boring but we need to understand this before we can apply this to a more prepared citizenry perspective step one is to size up the situation understand what the actual incident is you have to understand what's going on before you can do anything else this also is where we start initiating some of our initial reporting the five ws of what's going on any kind of Hazards for First Responders or or prepared citizens we need to start understanding what is going on step two is identify contingencies once we figured out what's going on we need to figure out what else can go wrong if that event can affect anything else in the local area now when we're talking the traditional IC System usually what we want to think about for this is things like gas leaks uh Hazmat any kind of problem that's in a local area that can rapidly not be in that local area anymore but rather expand to uh a larger area any kind of fire incident is also uh in this category as well so we need to figure out what has gone wrong and then we need to figure out based on on that event what else can go wrong step three we start figuring out what our plan is we need to figure out what the objective is for this incident what do we need to do once we figure out our end goal we need to figure out what equipment we need and what resources we need to make those goals achievable that's step four we need to identify all of the special things that we're going to need Personnel Logistics any kind of equipment stuff like that step five we start building our organization and we start getting a lot more organized now that we know what has happened and we have a goal to to fix the problem we can start delegating a lot of that responsibility to appropriate parties we can set up a chain of command and we can start coordinating with outside groups if necessary and we can start thinking about the logistical nature of of how long this incident might be and step six we can put all of this to good use by initiating our plan of action now again when we're talking the traditional ICS system we're talking we're talking about evacuations we're talking about setting up Triage medical facilities all kinds of stuff like this this is where we start to put all of our plans uh to good use now ironically by going over how professionals respond to crisis and how all this organizational stuff gets set up we lose sight of our actual goal right we're trying to figure out how to answer the question for the average person hey what do I do what what do I need to do in this situation what what do I do when something happens and how can I put all of this knowledge that I've learned and how can I put all of these tools that I have to good use so to answer that question let's jump over to a page from our ghostnet guide which we've kind of developed in house here as kind of a a stop Gap solution to Communications but inside the guide itself is a page on basic incident response now I am sure that this document will not stand the test of time uh because this is just something we've developed in house this is our solution to some of the problems that we face right somebody needs a one-page guide they can tuck in their pocket that's got a stepbystep process for what the average person can do do for a crisis that is not in their immediate area I would absolutely not by any means call this Doctrine this is just something that we've developed as a way of turning the professional IC System into something that the average person can use the IC System Incident Management incident control incident response in the professional world is going to involve hundreds if not thousands of people large government agencies and basically unlimited funding the average person out there who might be alone or with a very small group of people needs to have have something that they can work from so that they can understand what they can do and not feel completely hopeless when a situation happens and you know they're by themselves so let's run through what we have come up with as basically uh the basic incident response when it comes to Communications it's very important to understand the perspective here right we're trying to build something and we're trying to get the get the wheels moving with regards to what the average person can do and for the most part the average person can't really do anything if they've got a Chinese spy balloon flying over head there's not a whole lot they can do about that but they can pull out this guide they can open it up to this page and have something to work from most of the time when an incident occurs be it a train derailment in Ohio or a spy balloon or some kind of domestic action right most of the time that incident is not going to occur in the locality of most people right some people are going to be unfortunate enough to be you know in The Hot Zone right in the disaster area however for those people who are located immediately outside of the incident area they can still help quite a bit and understand what's going on so running through the basic process we have immediate concerns and the first step mirrors pretty much all first responder Doctrine physical security scene size up you need to make sure that you the responder or the prepared citizen are safe that is the most important thing you cannot really go through the rest of this process unless your physical security is pretty good now as we all know this is what the manual says when it comes to risk management and risk assessment there there is not going to be any situation where there's zero risk sometimes we have to take risks and unfortunately sometimes we have to operate in a situation where safety is not guaranteed as such it's a good idea in those situations to prioritize some level of communication with others so that people know that you are in uh In Harm's Way right chances are if something has happened and you are in a dangerous situation you need to reach out to someone to let that other person know you don't just want to start jumping right into battle tracking when you're physic security is not uh is not good right so physical security is Paramount and it's important to convey that if you are not in a good physical security situation it's important to convey that to your local contacts now again this guide kind of glosses over the physical security aspect of it that's a whole other rabbit hole we can go down another day right now we're really trying to focus on incident response from the average prepared citizen perspective which most of the time is going to involve Communications so that's why this is kind of Cals is heavy and this is why this is in the comm's guide right and that is actually the Second Step establishing communications early one of the main reasons we created the ghost net is to have a shared common ground to work from to figure out what is going on in the event that normal Communications are not reliable an undersea cable gets cut halfway around the world and you might not have internet access it might happen just that quickly so you need to have something to work from before things go dark now fortunately for the most part this is kind of UN likely right this is not a really likely scenario to prepare for a lot of emergency communications prepare for total comms blackouts right where the internet is basically just non-existent anymore that's not exactly a a likely scenario it's a most dangerous course of action so we can prepare for it but the most likely situation is localized outages censorship uh blacking out of certain news stories but not the actual internet itself and most of the time even though we've got really severe uh incidents happening all around the world today we can usually establish Communications pretty good on a variety of platforms radio is a good choice but it's not the only choice this way focuses heavily on you know radio functions but you can also do this very easily via social media so step two is jumping right into the incident to establish Communications with who you need to communicate with figure out who is actually able to track this crisis and actually move forward with this and start sending the 5ws of what is actually going on now this is a lot happening all at once right there's a lot of stuff going on here so let's break it down a little bit more with the incident command system and with any professional governmental publication that talks about you know the established doctrine of something we don't have that feeling of well you know Larry's at work or Dave's away on vacation so he can't help with this one but in the prepared citizenry world we do we've had National airspace violations with regards to these spy balloons and people couldn't take off work they had you know their airspace they were literally being being invaded and most people around the country couldn't take time off to prepare for this right they couldn't take time off to Monitor and battle track the situation because you know Society did not collapse immediately even though even though we had acts of War occurring on or over us soil so this is a reality we kind of have to look back at incidents like this and recognize hey look we have to live our normal lives even as society as crumbling we're still going to have to go to work the next day right so this is an important step to to consider is who is actually able to monitor this and to feed information to the people who can't take off time from work who may be in uh off- grid situations again this is exactly why we've started doing these wire reports on a more or less daily basis because every single day that goes by the five W's of some incident need to be conveyed to people who might not have the time or the desire to go sit down and actually research this stuff so a quick two-minute sort of update is very important right to start with when an incident occurs that you can send out very very quickly this step is where we can also start to incorporate some of the more I I won't say nefarious but it's kind of like all right this is some more tacticool stuff right where we can start establishing the procedures for sending salute reports we can start doing some more military stuff like establishing you know Communications Nets and things like that uh really you want to start getting your communication set up first but again step two is just Broad Strokes establish Communications figure out who's able to help you and send the five ws the who what when where why of what has happened to the people who are going to be interested in this incident whatever it is now we start moving on to the actual meat and potatoes of battle tracking so step three is to establish your talk your Tactical Operation Center whatever that may be and start beginning your staff functions now for most people they're not going to have a talk right they might have a cell phone in their hand and that might be yet you may have a laptop and a radio and that's your operation Center that's perfectly fine that's usually what I do most of the time anyway once Communications is established and you can start linking people together all across the country right people who might not be uh next to each other once you can start doing that you can start delegating some of these tasks based on what people's skills are so if you've got one guy who's really good at tracking aircraft well maybe he can keep an eye on the adsb feed and and start working through that if you've got somebody who's really good at communications then you might want to have them start working on more uh more efficient Communications Nets and stuff like that you've also got administrative functions right you've got to eat sometime you have to sleep sometime and you have to have a place to do this right as nice as it would be for all of us to live in a prepared Community with friendly neighbors who are all working together to better their Community this is just not a reality for most people most of the time you're probably going to have one guy in an apartment or a house who's got an HF radio and and he's talking to five or six other guys around the country or around the world and that is the team you're working with at the risk of going down this Rabbit Hole too much uh this seems to be the norm right people out there with with with great local communities who are very tight-knit they've got a lot of family they got a lot of friends to to lean on in times of Crisis well this stuff's going to be a lot easier for those for those people in that situation however for people who aren't really in that situation or for people who weren't that lucky you might be dealing with a oneman talk and that's okay uh but you can start getting these communications networks together the ghost net can can provide a really good Network for those of you out there who don't really have anyone uh or you don't really have anyone who's around you that's actually interested in incident response or responding to an event you know that's common too you might have you know friends and family and and in a community that is interested in local stuff you know like keeping riers out of their neighborhood but they might not understand the impacts of say a war breaking out somewhere around the world or you know some kind of airspace violation in the United States so establishing your operation Center whatever it may be it could be the most intense you know ham radio shaes kind of setup you can have all kinds of Mission Impossible control center set up or it can just be you sitting in your car with your cell phone it could be that now we'll talk more about this later but this is really where we start to to go to work based on what skills we have and what we're able to actually do once we've been doing that for a while and we settle into a good battle rhythm of of battle tracking things and we start recognizing the seriousness of the situation we we can move into step four which is reassess the situation and reassess your response and start thinking about logistics right depending on what the incident is you're going to at some point once you start battle tracking realize you're going to get a better idea of how long this crisis is going to last sticking with the Spy balloon example we know that this was a multi-day event right this is not something you're going to take your lunch break and go battle track for a minute and then uh that it'll be over no this was a very long duration event and it took a little over a week right to actually monitor and keep an eye on similar situation would say a land invasion of Ukraine this is going to take years and the scope of which is going to be well outside of what one person can do when it comes to Taiwan similar situation you might understand all right hey you know taiwan's been invaded or it's fallen in some way and now this is going to start impacting global trade basically immediately well this is where you need to start assessing your logistical needs how much food and water do I have how much time do I have to work with do I have to go to work or do I have to stop battle tracking and step away from the situation after a certain period of time this is where if you're in a more leadership role you really got to start working with schedules again this is something that the professionals don't have to deal with because they're dealing with paid responders right you're going to be working the crisis because you are on the clock well with volunteers it's a little bit different the backcountry search and rescue World kind of understands this a little bit more because that's mostly volunteers uh so basically you can you know show up to an incident and say Hey you know I can give you 12 hours today but that's that's all I can give you and this is something for leadership to take into account well the same thing applies here you can say you know Dave two doors down can give me you know five or six hours today so you know he can battle track the situation and kind of fill out all the paperwork and work through you know the event logs and under aircraft and all that stuff well now I can get some sleep for 4 hours because he's doing that you know this is really really confusing and really jumbled and random and it's it's all over the place right well this is what it's like to respond to an incident as a prepared citizen it's going to be disorganized it's going to be very confusing you're not going to have a strict hierarchy you're not going to have paid people who are there 24/7 to help with this however what you will have which is what the professionals don't have a lot of times is dedicated person Personnel though a lot of times a lot of communities look down on the idea of volunteers because they aren't as dedicated to a particular task because they're not being paid well in the prepared citizenry world you might find the Opposites true because they aren't paid because this is their life they're dealing with they're going to be more dedicated than even a paid Force because money is not going to be a motivating factor for them I can tell you right now that the average citizen out there who works a 9 to5 job or two 9o5 jobs per week and then still finds time to practice battle tracking work on their radio stuff figure out how to build their team and how to link up together with other people that person who's doing that on their own even with a very full life and just barely making it that person's pretty dedicated and I definitely want them on my team right so as we move through an event we can start to see how we we focus intently on the very first steps you know figuring out what's going on establishing calms determining who's there who who can uh help us with this crisis then start moving through the process of battle tracking and and establishing our staff functions figuring out you okay who's going to be able to provide this this or that then it starts tapering off and we start figuring out what logistical needs we're going to have in the long run and how many personnel we're going to have after a few hours it's really easy to get somebody to battle track for 15 minutes it's a little harder to tell them okay you need to battle track for the next 6 days uh so you're going to have to start factoring this in and it needs to start H the plan at least needs to start happening early otherwise you're going to have every one battle tracking everyone getting spun up right to begin with and they're all going to be tired by the end of the first day and everybody's going to want to go to sleep so you really need to have that staff administrative function right up front or at least maybe not right up front but early on in the process so that you can say all right you and you go go do what you need to do finish whatever day job you're working on finish whatever life uh projects you're working on as well and be back here in a in a day or two that might be what you have to do and once you've started to figuring out these logistical concerns well you know by that time you're you're sort of running through the process all over again once you've assessed all these logistical concerns and you've kind of settled into a good rhythm of operating well you know you might find the crisis ends or uh you decide to all right let's let's start phasing this out and we'll uh uh cut down on the minute-by-minute battle tracking and maybe we'll just do an update every few hours or okay well now we can just start uh working it back and and uh doing just like a daily update or something like that so that so the crisis will not usually have a specific end it will have like a point where everything just kind of tapers off uh because either no new information uh is coming out or the incident has already res resolved so once we get into that step we can start going with the hot wash process basically a debrief uh and figuring out what everybody did and how effective was the response now no one is going to want to do this literally in the professional world this is the hardest step to get people to do identify their deficiencies identify where the process could have gone a lot smoother and figure out what they could do better for next time again no one will want to do this everybody's going to want to go to sleep or you know go do whatever they're going to do and they're not going to want to analyze their own response to something but this is very very important this is probably the most important step of all because in the prepared Citizen Space we don't have concrete Doctrine to go by like I mean right now you're looking at a that somebody like me created you know after uh you know a lot of work but still it's just just one guy's opinion right so you need to figure out what other steps do we need to add what stuff do we need to take away the after action review figuring out what we did right what you did wrong and what you can do better for next time that is super super important because at the end of the day this is just a a free guide that we can make here it's not going to Encompass everything that a prepared citizen might want to do you can download or buy the incident command system handbook and you can download all these training Publications and stuff like that but at the end of the day you need to figure out how that Doctrine can apply to you and how you can use these tools to your advantage because most of the time the manual is the bare minimum this process again is the bare minimum so all of this sounds really complicated doesn't it it sounds very intense and and it sounds most most importantly like a lot of work well it kind of is as boring and as non-tactical as this sounds this is the kind of thing that is really uh going to help quite a lot and it already has helped quite a lot I personally think a lot of people out there in 2024 are feeling really unfulfilled uh because they've spent the last 10 or 20 years buying guns and ammo and freeze-dried food which is great and all that but it hasn't solved their problems and um we seem to have a lot more problems popping up day by day and it just gets a little bit overwhelming for a lot of people out there well something like this is an attempt to to help with that it's not perfect I'm sure there's more wrong with it than right with it but it's an attempt right it's a it's an attempt to try to do something as time goes on I'm sure this will change and um I'm hoping that it will uh because just me you know one person telling you this is what I do doesn't really uh help the majority of situations and this has to be more of a group project than anything else so hopefully this helped some of you out there uh figure out what to do uh when something happens in the world what to do when something happens and it's not in your immediate area but you want to figure out what's going on you want to start working through a process if nothing more than for a training exercise so give it a shot try it out and uh see if it helps the next time something happens that might be uh a high-profile event that you might uh want to start battle tracking so see how it goes and uh see how you can improve the process for you like all the things we do around here this process is quick and dirty but it's something to work from especially in a community where we uh we don't really have anything uh to work from and we're having to kind of make this up as we go but if we're trying to make things up as we go we might as well uh do the best we can so try it out see what works and if nothing else you'll have a better framework to work from if you're trying to fight in the shade