Tactical approach
An accident occurs and someone needs help. An emergency re-
sponse operation is initiated, an incident commander is designa-
ted and the municipality’s fire brigade drives to the incident site
to provide the requested assistance. Available resources must be
utilised in the best possible manner to gain and maintain control
over the events. This entails that all individuals and units that
are involved in the emergency response operation have a tacti-
cal approach to the assistance they provide. For example, those
who work at a command support centre must be tactical in their
assessments between ongoing rescue operations, the need for as-
sistance, the risk situation and in maintaining preparedness for
any other emergencies that may arise. The incident commander
must be tactical in deciding on which actions are to be prioriti-
sed within the frameworks of the emergency response operation.
Even a fullsuit firefighter must be tactical in how he or she deals
with the tasks that fullsuit firefighters conduct. The entire sys-
tem must be characterised by a tactical approach.
But what is a tactical approach? It is simply the optimal ex-
ploitation of the conditions that a situation presents. That is much
as possible, turning poor conditions or less favourable conditions
into advantages. To be able to juggle several balls at once and be-
ing able to determine which ball should be dealt with first, in con-
sideration to all of the other balls and to other needs. To be able
to make conscious and welldeliberated decisions that in various
ways deal with developments.
A tactical approach is a requirement for being able to gain and
maintain control. Control to a great degree is linked to decisionma-
king and to the capability to create mental images of the situation
and how it will be dealt with. By early in a response, taking conside-
ration to information, often in the form of ocular impressions, and
primarily to the knowledge possessed by individuals in the system,
a form of mental control is established. The capability for creating
such mental images of a sequence of events and conceivable deve-
lopments is often the determining factor for the results of an emer-
gency response operation. But control is also about purely physi-
cally dealing with the events and developments in conjunction with
emergency response operations.
The degree of control will vary during the course of an emer-
gency response operation and between different individuals. Most
people at least have the ability to take some consideration to pre-