Wisconsin Emergency Management Looking to Create a New Incident Management Team

Tuesday, May 17th, 2022 -- 11:01 AM

Wisconsin’s emergency responders are often faced with complex and difficult decisions as they work to protect lives and property.

While many overcome those challenges without outside help, sometimes the demands of an incident may exceed their capabilities. In those situations, they may make a request for an incident management team (IMT) to provide support.

An IMT is a team of experienced and well-trained staff who can assist local emergency responders with critical management tasks during an incident. This may include managing volunteers, establishing a logistics operation to distribute supplies, or overseeing the process of removing debris for the scene of a disaster.

While there are multiple regional IMT groups in the state, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has three Regional Type 3 Teams primarily focused on wildfires and severe weather incidents, Wisconsin Emergency Management (WEM) last year began the process of forming a new state-sponsored Type 3 All-Hazards IMT.

“One of the major lessons learned coming out of the state’s COVID response was that we needed a more robust network of personnel to manage these complex, large incidents,” said WEM Acting Administrator Greg Engle. “Over the last year, we’ve been working to build a state team so that those capabilities exist.”

The result of those efforts is the Wisconsin All-Hazards Incident Management Team, which consists currently of 23 members from a wide variety of backgrounds in both the public and private sectors.

Most have previous IMT experience, and many have spent decades working in emergency management, public safety and incident response.  After further recruitment from other state agencies, the team’s full strength should eventually be about 40 members.

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