ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the kinds of decisions that are made at local and regional/state levels of fire management, discusses how people make decisions at these levels and examines some of the pressures that may lead to impaired decision making. 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 levels, 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.
