When an incident occurs within a single jurisdiction and there is no overlapping responsibility, the appropriate authority designates a single Incident Commander who has overall incident management responsibility.

When incident management crosses jurisdictional and/or functional agency boundaries, the various jurisdictions and organizations may still agree to designate a single Incident Commander.

The Incident Commander establishes the incident objectives that guide incident action planning and operations.

When there is a single Incident Commander, that individual is solely responsible (within limits of authority) for:

• Establishing incident objectives
• Ensuring that incident activities work to accomplish objectives