Concurrence Needed - Incident Typology

Reintroducing the Type 0 Incident for War and other Catastrophic Incidents

Mar 01, 2026

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a six slice pie chart, with the letters EM in the center. For Incident types. Type 05 is a single site, 04 is multiple sites, 03 is a single site but with state - and this could be state, territory or tribal entity - level support needed. Also multiple operational periods and possible federal assistance. Type 02 is multi-sites, and lots of resources from many places, and longer response and recovery timeframes, type 01 is a complex multi-state and federally declared disaster. Type 0 is an extinction level event. One which is not managed only via Emergency Management. These are the book's interpretation of the FEMA incident types, plus the addition of the type 0. — Source: https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003474685 (C) Barton Dunant. Used with Permission.

Emergency management has as one of its standards to “ratchet up and down” the resource support needed, based on the incident type. For example, when a Type 4 incident is still scaling up – meaning not yet under control or expanding – additional resources should be req…

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