Law enforcement officers and agents from area counties andjurisdictions are receiving Incident Command Systems 300 trainingat the St. Francis Parish Center this week.

Members of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department, theBrookhaven City Police Department, and about nine otherjurisdictions are taking the class. Brookhaven-Lincoln County CivilDefense Director Clifford Galey said is a part of the directivesput into place by President George W. Bush following HurricaneKatrina.

“It’s basically getting local folks trained to teach their owndepartments,” he said. “It’s a structure the federal governmentrequires. In an incident like Katrina, it gives us a chain ofcommand when several jurisdictions are involved.”

After the August 2005 hurricane, Bush ordered a comprehensivenational approach to incident management be developed that appliedto all jurisdictional levels across functional disciplines. TheICS-300 class is required by the federal government for allemergency first responders.

The class focuses on the basic areas such as staffingfundamentals, resource management, unified command, and incidentmanagement in any crisis situation. This simplifies anything inwhich more than one jurisdiction is called in to a situation,whether it be something on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, orwhether it be a local emergency.

“So if there’s a wreck, and the highway patrol is on the scene,but components of a meth lab are found in the car, it changes thewhole picture,” said Tommy Malone of the Mississippi StateUniversity Extension Service. “Suddenly not only do you have anaccident scene, you’ve got a crime scene.”

Government training officer Ben Carver of the MSU ExtensionService said Mississippi is one of the first states to comply withthe National Incident Management System.

“It worked really well on the coast after Katrina. That’s whyyou heard so much more about Louisiana on the news, because we weredoing it right,” he said. “By the end of 2007, all of the mainresponders in Mississippi will be trained in this program.”