Town adopts NIMS system

Thursday, August 10, 2006

On Tuesday, the Cloverdale Town Council approved a measure that keeps it in line with other towns and cities nationwide.

The council unanimously approved Ordinance 2006-7 at its monthly meeting Tuesday, adopting the National Incident Management System (NIMS) for town departments.

"Each department is to develop an implementation plan," Cloverdale Police Chief Charlie Hallam said. "Basically, you can cooperate with all agencies there."

The board had discussed the issue last year, but did not pass an ordinance until Tuesday.

"We had talked about it a lot, but we had not passed it," Hallam said. "We've been in compliance, we just didn't have the ordinance."

The ordinance said that by following the system, departments in the town of Cloverdale will be able to establish a "single, comprehensive approach to domestic incident management to ensure that all levels of government have the capability to work efficiently and effectively together."

It continues by statng that NIMS provides for interoperability and compatibility among Federal, State, and local capabilities and includes a core set of concepts, principles, terminology and technologies covering the incident command system, unified command, training, management of resources and reporting.

Hallam said the system -- required by the Department of Homeland Security -- will help further enhance communications between officials in the case of a disaster.

For example, he said old police 10 codes, through the NIMS system, codes for agencies would be easier to use.

He added the town, through NIMS, has the opportunity to receive grants.

"It will enhance us on getting the town grants," Hallam said. "All towns are supposed to comply with NIMS."

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