Branches and Units
Examples
In a measles outbreak the Operations Section may have three units: hospital surveillance, contact tracing, and vaccination administration, and there may be one or more personnel assigned to each of these units.
For a more complex weather event, the Operations Section may have many more units, such as environmental health, food protection, water safety and shelter operation units. In this case, the food protection and water safety units may be placed under a branch called: “food and water safety.”
While each section has a broad purpose, depending upon the nature of the event, each ICS section may open one or more subsections that are referred to as units. Each of these units will serve a specific function. When a situation occurs where there are many units, or many disciplines are involved in performing one function, groups of units within the ICS section may be placed within a branch. In general, branches are established when the number or complexity of units in the ICS section is larger than what a Section Chief can control. However, it is not necessary to always utilize branches; for smaller health departments or less complex events, only units will be established within each section. Within each section, the managers are referred to as Branch Directors and Unit Leaders. Each of these managers assumes responsibility for the staff and the branch or unit’s performance. Figure 1 provides an illustration of an ICS tree that may be used by a small department of health or any size agency for a less complex incident, while Figures 2 and 3 provide illustrations of ICS trees that might be used by larger departments with many assigned responsibilities that utilize branches as well as units to organize the response during a complex event. It is important to note that the number of sections opened, units activated or branches formed is entirely based upon the needs of the agency, the available resources, and the judgment of the Agency Incident Commander (AIC).