One of the cornerstones of large-scale emergency management is the use of the National Incident Management System (NIMS).
I have been taking NIMS courses for a long time now, and while I've gotten various certifications and the like, I've always had this nagging feeling that NIMS just isn't in synch with the reality of really large-scale incidents that don't happen to be wildfires (NIMS started from lessons learned in western wildfire management).

I came across this article today in which the author goes into some extensive detail about how NIMS and politics fare when they are in conflict (to save you the read, politics win).

I was rather startled to read in the article this item: "Katrina was a NIMS event but NIMS was new then and a big takeaway was that NIMS was effectively implemented." (oh really?)

So for someone who thought NIMS "worked" in Katrina to say, "The current lack of understanding, combined with the political messaging, in my mind threaten the future of NIMS. Resistance will grow, not only among private companies who now in most cases seem to eagerly participate, but also among other government agencies who could experience the same undermining political message" gives me some serious pause.

The author is a NIMS "enthusiast" - a position I don't share. I think NIMS is absurdly top-heavy, bureaucratic and complex - so does New York City, which uses a "modified" NIMS (and is the only city in America to have been hit by terrorists more than once, and didn't ask for FEMA help).

Having operated under NIMS for a few largish events (river floods) I found that NIMS was well-intentioned, exquisitely documented, and so hopelessly out of touch with the on-the-ground reality of both resources and administrative skills of emergency response agencies that it is a bit like having a guidelines for sex as written by someone who has all of the procedural elements well documented, but none of the practical experience that actually matters.

But I wonder what other folks with NIMS training think - does NIMS actually scale up? Or is it just a collection of forms to fill out to keep bean counters and administrators happy?