Keyboard Incident Commanders to be officially recognized as part of After-action report process

In an initiative to help make the fire service safer comments posted to fire service related blogs and Facebook pages are to be used as part of after action reports. Typically After-Action reports are drafted in the aftermath of major incidents or calls involving injuries/deaths.

Major blogs such as Statter911 often times report on major incidents. These bloggers provide video and commentary about what took place on scene. But as many have pointed out there is a wealth of information found in the comments sections after these blog posts.

The commenters have been lovingly dubbed “Keyboard Incident Commanders” or KICs. Often times these KICs were not on the call so their judgment is not clouded by the emotions of having lived the incident. In addition they have minutes, even hours to critique tactics that were decided upon in only seconds.

Many in the fire industry are heralding the use of KIC in after action reports as a major step forward. When mistakes happen on the fire ground someone needs to point them out and make recommendations on improvement of tactics. Who better than an anonymous online KIC?

Only a few fire chiefs have expressed concern over the use of KICs. The main issues these chiefs have are the qualifications of the KICs. The most often cited fear was that some rookie volunteer would be second-guessing a seasoned career firefighter. One other issues that a few chiefs feared was their own people making comments trying to undermine department leadership.

The mandatory use of KICs goes into effect on July first. We will keep you updated as to how this new process works out.