A Preliminary Examination of Command and Control by Incident Commanders of Dutch Fire Services during Real Incidents.

In this paper, we attempt to get a better understanding of command and control practices of incident commanders from Dutch fire services (battalion chiefs, BCs) by examining the recordings made by helmet-mounted cameras during 55 real incidents. The aim is to examine the degree to which the BCs issued orders to front-line workers and the degree to which these orders were carried out appropriately. The results indicate that incident commanders were able to influence the work at the front line, but were generally not in control of what happened at the front line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]