H-2 - TFD Duty Officer Program

certified personnel are at the station, then the command officer should consider responding to the station to switch vehicles instead of responding to the scene. Nothing precludes the duty officer from responding directly to the scene, particularly for a fire or MVA. If another command officer becomes available, the next command officer may respond in the command vehicle to the scene. From time to time, the department may lack sufficient responders to respond to a call. If available, the command officer will respond to any calls where there are insufficient personnel available or any calls that would result in a no-response if the command officer had not responded. If insufficient personnel are available to respond to routine, non-emergency calls, or for non-life threatening EMS calls, the duty officer will respond to prevent a no-response or a delayed response. Nothing in this policy restricts the duty officer from responding to any incident or call of their selection, including to manage or supervise personnel, to provide assistance, or any other purpose. INCIDENT COMMAND This section is not intended to be a comprehensive guideline regarding incident command rather it is a summary. Cross reference this guideline with Incident Command Guideline, OG ____. Generally, it is the duty officer’s role to act as incident command on all appropriate incident scenes unless command is passed to another officer and to manage and supervise department members and recruits. The duty officer will maintain accountability for all TFD personnel at an incident scene, whether operating in district or out of district for mutual aid, unless relieved or accountability is assigned to another officer. Safety of department personnel is a paramount concern. Depending on the size and scope of the incident and as other officers arrive at the scene, it may be requested or necessary to pass off command and assume a different role, such as operations, and to request assistance from another agency. The duty officer should consider whether resources may be disregarded or if additional resources are needed, but should generally consider the reliability of the source of the information in making the decision to cancel or disregard resources.