Answer (regardless of the choice selected):

There is not one right answer to this question. The general rule is that the jurisdiction or organization with primary responsibility for the incident will designate the incident commander. In this scenario this incident occurred within the jurisdiction of Liberty County. However, at the outset Fire and EMS will likely have the largest role. The Fire resources are from Central City and the EMS are from Liberty County. This is an incident that will involve multiple jurisdictions and agencies. A Unified Command with representatives from the various jurisdictions and agencies involved in response to this incident, to include Fire/EMS, Law Enforcement and Public Works is also a viable approach. If you chose this, remember that in a Unified Command, each organization in the Unified Command provides an Incident Commander, and this group of Commanders manage the incident together by establishing a common set of incident objectives.

For the purposes of this scenario, because it is an incident centered on removing casualties from the area of the fire and suppressing the fire, a single Incident Commander is sufficient. We will establish Incident Command with a single Incident Commander from the fire service. All agencies involved in the response will take direction from this Incident Commander.