First responders

Chiefs endorse documents on active shooters and community risk assessment
During the September 2013 meeting of the Urban Fire Forum at NFPA headquarters in Quincy, MA, fire chiefs from around the world endorsed two important documents for today’s fire service:

• Fire Service Deployment: Assessing Community Vulnerability (PDF, 8 MB)
  Effectively managing a fire department requires an understanding of and an ability to demonstrate how changes to resources will affect community outcomes. It is imperative that fire department leaders, as well as political decision makers, know how fire department resource deployment in their local community affects community outcomes in three important areas: civilian injury and death; firefighter injury and death; and property loss.
• Position Statement: Active Shooter and Mass Casualty Terrorist Events (PDF, 27 KB)
  The emerging threat of terrorism and asymmetric warfare, specifically small unit “active shooter” and improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, is a concern for the fire service. An attack by radicals armed with weapons in public areas, such as schools, shopping malls, churches or any other locations where people congregate is a real threat to a sense of security and daily lives.
  
  From the U.S. Fire Administration
  Fire/Emergency Medical Services Department Operational Considerations and Guide for Active Shooter and Mass Casualty Incidents (PDF, 242 KB)
  
  Additional resources (Courtesy of Chief Jim Schwartz, Arlington County, VA)

• Rescue task force zone map (PDF, 157 KB)
• Rescue task force SOP (PDF, 69 KB)
• Rescue task force operations (PDF, 2 MB)
• Rescue task force protocols (PDF, 82 KB)
• Patient status and information flow (PDF, 171 KB)
• "Toward the Sound of Shooting" (from Jems.com, December 2009) (PDF, 452 KB)
• Tactical Emergency Casualty Care (TECC): Guidelines for the Provision of Prehospital Trauma Care in High Threat Environments (from the Journal of Special Operations Medicine) (PDF, 376 KB)
• Evolution and Application of TCCC Guidelines to Civilian High Threat Medicine (from the Journal of Special Operations Medicine) (PDF, 404 KB)

NFPA 's Robert Solomon talks about "lockdowns" and how explains how procedures and protocols prescribed by NFPA's codes and standards need examination with regards to active shooter and other hazardous  events.

Free research, tactics, techniques and procedures on mass casualty decontamination for first responders
The U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center offers free resources for first responders in its Updated Guidelines for Mass Casualty Decontamination During a HAZMAT/Weapon of Mass Destruction Incident. The updated guidelines include concise descriptions of procedures and checklists to set up and execute mass casualty decontamination (Volume I) as well as in-depth discussions of HAZMAT/WMD mass casualty decontamination (Volume II). Both volumes include high-resolution graphics developed for emergency reference and training materials for use in multi-lingual communities. The guidelines were updated with input from community responders, Army responders, and Department of Defense medical and chemical-biological technical expertise.