Firefighter decision making at the local incident and regional/state control levels

Large-scale emergency fire management is a complex endeavour, with personnel at multiple different levels of an organisation making decisions about how best to fight fires and manage incidents. At the local incident level, firefighters and incident commanders make tactical decisions about fire management. At regional and state level fire officers make strategic decisions to coordinate resources, liaise with external bodies and ensure levels below them are making effective decisions. An effective response to an emergency, therefore, depends on people at all levels of fire management making good decisions. Understanding how people make decisions at regional and state levels of emergency management is particularly important given that post-accident and coronial inquiries often focus on decisions made at these levels following large-scale emergencies.