Ep 92: Area Command - What Is It And When Do I Need It?
Episode 92
Published Sep 9, 2024
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 20:16
Episode Summary
When multiple related incidents occur, effective management of resources and intelligence requires information to flow upwards. Today our panel examines the role of Area Command.
Episode Notes
When multiple events affect a community there will be a competition for resources. The best way to manage this scenario is with Area Command. In today’s podcast, our panel discusses when Area Command is needed, what they do, and who is involved.
View this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/pyhMLag6F8Y
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:We had a listener question recently that asked us about area command. They were a little confused about what it is, and more importantly, when do you need to use it. It's a tool in the toolbox. You wanna use it when you need it, and you don't want it when you don't need it. That's today's topic, area command, sticking around.
Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host, doing a double header today with my dear friends, Terry Nichols and Joe Ferrara, two of the other instructors here at the National Center for Integrated Emergency Response. Guys, thanks for sticking around and doing another one today.
Terry Nichols:
Glad to be here, as always.
Joe Ferrara:
Happy to be here, Bill.
Bill Godfrey:
Fantastic. So we had a question from, that came in to us about area command, and where does it fit. And I thought it was kind of interesting, because they weren't really clear what exactly it was, but more importantly, they were very unclear of when you really kind of needed to bring it in and when it fit. And so in a general sense, so let me lay down a couple of baselines, and then we can walk our way through it.
So the issue that comes up is that sometimes you have multiple incidents, and they're related. They are absolutely connected or related. And so you need to fold them together to manage the information, resources, all of that good stuff. And there's two ways in the incident command system to do that. One is called a complex, and the other one is area command. And here's the difference. In a complex, let's say that we have two incidents and you two are the incident commanders, you're incident commander A, you're incident commander B, your two incidents are related. I'm gonna establish a complex. You are no longer the incident commanders. I am now rolling up your incidents under one umbrella. And I'm the incident commander giving you the specific direction on what I want you to do at your incidents. So you lose that incident command authority, and you're rolling up, that's a complex.
The other one, which is area command, you retain your authority as the incident commander to make decisions over your scene, but you're reporting information up and coordinating with me as the area commander. And I'm working to fill your resource needs, also manage the intel, information sharing, and things like that. And so that's the difference between the two is the idea of a complex, where you've taken away the incident command authority and rolled it all up together. They all are essentially one incident with multiple locations. And then the other one is area command, where you're leaving incident command authority with the incident commanders in the field, but you're now coordinating them behind the scenes, may still provide some strategic objectives to you, but it's up to you to implement it and manage your thing. So now that said, Joe, talk a little bit about why area command is even a part of the discussion of active shooter events.
Joe Ferrara:
Well, I think we can look through the lens of, in an active shooter event. And this is not just the, in a previous podcast we talked about, you know, just two or three casualties on the ground, and Terry was worried about getting an ambulance there. This is the bigger, the mass casualty, so to speak, or even a complex coordinated attack where we have two or more sites or we have multiple attackers potentially, we have an act of terrorism. So this is a big event affecting a community and multiple events.
When we have those multiple events, what's the number one thing we're gonna compete for? And that's resources. Terry on his incident wants 75 law enforcement officers. Well, guess what? So do I. And I've got 20 or 30 casualties, and you got 20 or 30 casualties, so I want 50 ambulances. Guess what? So does Terry. Do we have that in our community? Some communities, maybe so. Maybe that's, you know, one, you know, one assignment and we've got New York City and we've got all those resources available. But I think in most communities in the United States, we don't have that readily available. And when we start competing for resources, who decides who wins and who loses there? I think my incident is the most important. Terry thinks his is the most important. We need area command to make those decisions about resource allocation. We call it a right now, right now problem.
And again, you know, you've mentioned before, you know your good friend, Jeff, or our good friend to the whole program, Jeff Williams, who coined that right now, right now problem. And it is. Later on when we need resource allocation and this event has matured, we have Emergency Operations Center. But, you know, I think there's a time to spin up with an EOC to get it from a level three activation to a level one full activation in a community. That doesn't help Terry who needs it now, and it doesn't help me who needs it right now. That's the right now, right now problem. That's where area command I think fills that role.
And if leadership in a community can take that on and say, if Bill becomes the area commander, and we've got these two attacks going on, Bill can say I want all the resources to come to area staging. I need all the intel and information so I can anticipate what may happen in this community. And lastly, I need to link all the communication, so I have all the information about this incident. So I can say, "Okay, Joe, you're asking for 75 law enforcement officers. I can only give you 40. And Terry, I can only give you 35." Great, that's our right now situation. You've gotten me the resources. And then we take it from there. But if we're gonna continue on competing for resources, neither one of us are gonna win.
Terry Nichols:
Right, I think it'll be a bad day for both of us.
Joe Ferrara:
Of course.
Terry Nichols:
'Cause, you know, like you said very eloquently, you think yours is most important. I think mine is most important.
Joe Ferrara:
And we should.
Terry Nichols:
And it very well may be. But going back just kind of fundamentally about recognizing when this might come into play. It's the type of event, you mentioned a terrorist attack, multiple attacks, two or more, I think Paris. I think Paris is a good example. You know, you bring the terrorist attacks they had there where they hit the cafe, and the stadium, and all these different things going on. Obviously a lot of resources needed, but we don't know what's coming next.
That's the key part for our law enforcement partners out there is like, yeah, you have these two, we're working and we're early on, and we're just starting to think about this area command. And we realize, I just found a map on one of these, the people that we've, you know, either gotten in custody or had to shoot or whatever. And I see they've got circled this building in the community, you know, 10 miles away. How do I get the information to 'em? So it starts down an intel route, but it tells us we're dealing with something much larger than just two separate incidents. They're linked now. And that's the time for the Area Command to stand up and start managing those resources. 'Cause we're calling in a lot of folks, 'cause there's one more coming, there's probably five more coming. That ought to be our assumption. And we need to start getting these resources into a centralized place with somebody making decisions on who gets what.
Bill Godfrey:
And I think that really sums it up nicely. And what I would add to that for the people listening is in today's reality, the chance that you're gonna do your entire career on the job, 20, 25 years on the job, the chance that you're gonna respond to an event that at least gets dispatched as an active shooter event or a possible active shooter event, they're probably pretty good. It's pretty likely that in your career, you're gonna respond to one or more events that seems to be an active shooter event.
It is equally highly unlikely that in your 25-year career you're ever gonna respond to one of these events that escalates to the point where you're going to need area command. The problem is, we get a few a year in the country that meet the definition of the complex coordinated attack where we want to kick in this area command to manage the resources, manage the intel, and to be that community protection component. So when you've got a map of this building, and Terry comes up with some phone numbers, or I'm sorry, Joe comes up with some phone numbers or some other maps or intel, it's my job as the area commander, while I'm pushing resources to you, is to also pull resources to go send and protect the community, to protect that building, to analyze this information we're getting and saying, where does it lead us to next? Because you guys have your hands full. You're managing your individual incidents.
And so just as a level of expectation, as a line police officer, line firefighter, line paramedic, the chances that you're gonna get involved in area command are very, very low. That you're gonna be in an incident where one is gonna get stood up is very low. And even if it does happen, at your level on the line, you're probably not even gonna know about it until after the fact. It might even be a couple days later. It's going to affect the very top at the incident command team, at the top incident management level.
And the only thing it changes is where you get your resources from. Instead of calling dispatch, I call area command. And then area command has to figure out where to get them from. Whether they're coming from mutual aid, whether they're coming from counties, whether they've got the EOC manager in the middle of the night working his cell phone to the state, making a state request to get 200 ambulances from across the state, whatever the case may be, that's the job of area command, and we don't often need it, thank God.
Terry Nichols:
I couldn't agree with you more. You know, you think it's, I see it as natural disasters and things like that where I think you had mentioned a situation where it had been used where it wasn't an active shooter, it wasn't a terrorist attack things. So that's probably more likely in our careers, we'll see something like that.
Bill Godfrey:
Oh, you were talking earlier about the gulf-
Terry Nichols:
Deepwater Horizon-
Bill Godfrey:
Deepwater, thank you. I don't know why that had slipped out of my head, but yeah, there's an example of a huge event that got wrapped up that way.
Terry Nichols:
It wasn't criminal as it were that we're talking about active shooters or anything like that.
Joe Ferrara:
The all-hazards approach.
Terry Nichols:
Yeah, exactly, the all-hazards approach where the whole concept of incident commands, I retain command of my situation, he retains command of his situation, and as it spirals around, but there's one group over an area that oversees the resource allocation that are overarching.
Joe Ferrara:
And that's a really important distinction, because teaching this across the country, I think that's the number one question or confusion that comes up when we introduce the concept of area command. Maybe the last time they heard about it was during a, you know, an ICS 400 class, and this, you know, they saw it in the book and they spent five minutes on it, and that was the last thing. And then suddenly we're introducing this concept, and they're like, "So when do I transfer my incident command to the area command?"
And it's like, okay, hold on there. There is no transfer of command, because you never lost command. Each individual incident, its incident priorities, its needs, its desires, its responsibility sticks with that incident commander. And incident B, same thing, sticks with that incident commander.
Again, as Bill said, the only thing that changes here is how do I get my resources. Now I'm relying on another commander, an area commander to take all this information, my priorities, your priorities, the intelligence information that's coming in from the entire region potentially, what's going on, what's gonna happen. That person is now making the decision on, if I asked for 50, here's why I can only give you 25. Or, maybe I asked for 50, and he's gonna give me 100. Great, you know, we're gonna see how that works out. But at the end of the day, I no longer have to worry about competing for resources. I'm gonna ask somebody, this is what I need and this is why that decision's gonna be made, but I don't lose the incident.
Terry Nichols:
I'm thinking tactically, you know, I need three BearCats. I've got a standoff going on right now and I need some armor. His is done. His tactical piece is done.
Bill Godfrey:
I was just gonna say-
Joe Ferrara:
Maybe I need EOD.
Bill Godfrey:
Let me provide that as also a good example of what and why area command can be needed. So earlier, Joe, you used the example that you and Terry both are asking for 75 police officers and that kind of stuff. Now, let me adjust the scenario slightly. You've got 20 or 30 patients, but your shooting is done. Terry has 20 or 30 patients, and he is facing off four attackers with automatic weapons that are not down. And the killing is ongoing. You're asking for 70 cops. Terry's asking for 70 cops. Joe, you're not getting any. I need you to hold what you've got-
Joe Ferrara:
And I have no idea what the challenges are.
Bill Godfrey:
Everybody's going there.
Joe Ferrara:
But you do.
Bill Godfrey:
Exactly.
Joe Ferrara:
And that's the difference with area commander.
Bill Godfrey:
And that's, the strategic direction that you might get from an area commander, as Joe as an incident commander. Here's my orders to you is I need you to hold what you got, make do with what you got. I got bigger problems on another scene.
Joe Ferrara:
And now I understand that. I understand why I can't get those resources. Because Terry doesn't have the time to give me that answer. Nor are we communicating on the same channel.
Bill Godfrey:
You may not even-
Joe Ferrara:
We just, right, I may not even know that's going on.
Bill Godfrey:
Exactly.
Joe Ferrara:
But you do.
Terry Nichols:
And you're not calling your buddy at agency X, you know, 20 miles away trying to get you officers to come over and help me. And I'm calling my buddy at Agency X trying to get more officers.
Joe Ferrara:
Maybe it's the same agency.
Terry Nichols:
Exactly. And now we're just duplicating effort, and area command solves so many problems like that when it comes to resources.
Joe Ferrara:
Yeah, but it's important to realize area command doesn't take away the incident command responsibility. That never goes away.
Bill Godfrey:
I think that's spot on. I think the other thing that I would add in very quickly is that area command is a high-level leadership tool. So for example, we often talk about when and how to transition to unified command, at these incidents that stand individually. And let's take the scenarios that we just gave. The two of you have got your two individual incidents. What I would say to the people that would be working on that unified command team is you need to be doing area command and let Terry and Joe run those incidents.
We need the high-level executive decision makers at area command looking at the whole community response to this and mitigating not just the incidents that you've got and any potential incidents to come, but also the overall protection of the community all falls to that. And so this is a tool that the line level supervisors need to be aware of, and they need to understand conceptually, but the chances that a patrol sergeant or an engine company officer as a lieutenant are gonna get pulled to area command to run it, that's not terribly realistic. It's a chief-level job, you know, it's an executive-level job.
Terry Nichols:
It's a good awareness level to know that this is the way it works, this is way it's intended to work, this is the way NIMS is designed. Incident command system is designed to be used this way. Everybody needs to know it. Again, like you said, chances of you doing it, you know, patrol sergeant, patrol lieutenant, slim to none, but you need to know it.
Bill Godfrey:
Need to be aware of it.
Terry Nichols:
Yep, be aware of it.
Joe Ferrara:
Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
There, and interestingly, and I kind of love this in the class that we do, while this is a very, it can be a complex topic, it's actually not. It's really pretty simple when you break it down, and this is one of the shortest lectures that we do in the entire class. It literally takes about 15 minutes, because the message that we want you to take away is this organizational structure. And for those that are listening on the audio, I'm holding up our checklist that shows the sticks and boxes of the org chart. This organizational structure, Joe, that you built at your incident, and then Terry, you've built one at your incident, none of that changes.
Joe Ferrara:
Nope.
Bill Godfrey:
The area command just goes over the top and has another staging area that is mustering the resources that they're gonna then push to you guys. And they have an intelligence section that's going to be working with your intelligence sections to get information and coordinate, and the same on the PIO front. The public information officer, the joint information center, all of that stuff is going to be handled out of area command and would relieve you of a lot of burden.
Joe Ferrara:
It actually makes the incident commander's job a lot easier.
Bill Godfrey:
It does.
Terry Nichols:
Yeah.
Joe Ferrara:
I think, you know?
Bill Godfrey:
It does, it does. Well, just like the lecture, there's not a lot more to this one. Joe, you got any other final thoughts?
Joe Ferrara:
No, I just think it's, you know, when we talk about triage tactical and transport, we talk about, you know, the three-headed dog Fluffy, feeds resources downrange to make the incident happen. This is no different. Area command is feeding us resources. If we don't get 'em, the incident doesn't work. If area command doesn't understand our strategy or our objectives, the incident doesn't work, and he's not able to provide us with those resources.
So I think it's incumbent upon not only understanding what an area command is, but if you're an incident commander and an area command gets stood up, you've got to have that linkage, and you gotta understand what the purpose of that area commander is as far as your incident. You're not losing control of your incident, you're gaining resources.
Terry Nichols:
My closing will be, I just wanna thank Joe for giving me those officers. I needed them on my situation.
Joe Ferrara:
Oh, no problem, no problem.
Terry Nichols:
For allowing the area to send them to me.
Joe Ferrara:
I'll take the 35, you keep the 40.
Terry Nichols:
You know, I just appreciate that. But I always enjoy these conversations, 'cause I always A, I always learn something, and B, it's just a good, I enjoy spending time around very, very smart people.
Bill Godfrey:
Well, it's a pleasure to have you guys. This is a good topic, and I knew it would be fairly quick and to the point. Now, as we mentioned, we do cover complex coordinated attacks and area command as a component of the active shooter incident management advance class that we do, which if you haven't requested that for your community, it is available funded by DHS, so it doesn't cost you anything as a responder. You can go to our website and sign up for that under the training, just request the DHS-hosted training request.
But I also wanna say for those in leadership that might be more interested in learning about complex coordinated attacks and area command and how to manage these events, LSU, Louisiana State University, NCBRT has a, it's a 16-hour course, I think.
Terry Nichols:
Yes, I believe so.
Joe Ferrara:
Yeah, CCA.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. They have a CCA, complex coordinated attack, 16-hour, two-day course, that is pretty good at putting people through their paces and drilling you through this stuff and really spending time focusing on the big picture management and some of the challenges that come with it. So also funded by DHS and available for free. So hit up the LSU NCBRT website. If I could remember the actual website off the top of my head, I would give it, but if you Google it, you'll find it and look up the CCA class.
Gentlemen, thanks for coming in. Appreciate you hanging in to do a double header. As always, thank you to our producer, Karla Torres. And until next time, stay safe.