The Incident Commander is the individual responsible for all incident activities, including the development of strategies and tactics and the ordering and the release of resources. The Incident Commander has overall authority and responsibility for conducting incident operations and is responsible for the management of all incident operations at the incident site.

The Incident Commander must:

• Have clear authority and know agency policy.
• Ensure incident safety.
• Establish the Incident Command Post.
• Set priorities, and determine incident objectives and strategies to be followed.
• Establish the Incident Command System organization needed to manage the incident.
• Approve the Incident Action Plan.
• Coordinate Command and General Staff activities.
• Approve resource requests and use of volunteers and auxiliary personnel.
• Order demobilization as needed.
• Ensure after-action reports are completed.
• Authorize information released to the media.