Approximately 40 agencies and organizations, both private and public, are working together to help reduce the duration of traffic incidents and the congestion caused by them.
Chief Justin James, of the Council Bluffs Fire Department, says the most important thing about the Traffic Incident Management Program is getting everyone who is involved in dealing with these types of incidents together in the same room.
James says it’s crucial to build relationships among agencies and organizations PRIOR to a traffic incident.
He says it’s also good to come together afterward to figure out how things could be done better as well as what went right and what went wrong.
"It does a lot to improve safety for the first responders but also for the traveling public that are coming through. The more efficient we are at scenes, the more likely we will clear the emergency quicker and get our apparatus out of the way, so we can keep people flowing so we don’t cause some type of secondary accident.”
James says this is a public/private partnership you don’t see a lot. With towing companies and HDR coming together with public safety personnel, he says everyone knows they need to do a good job of communicating within the Incident Management System so that the private sector understands how the public sector operates.
He says the partnership also allows law enforcement and fire departments to discuss what priorities need to be addressed first.