If you are affiliated with Worcester RACES or RACES in another town, both the federal and state governments have recently agreed upon some basic core requirements for RACES personnel in order to retain the RACES designation and certification. These requirements consist of taking two Incident Command Courses offered online by FEMA. The specific courses are IS-100.b and IS-700.a. The IS-100.a is basic Incident Command Structure. This is the management system that is to be used to manage any large scale incidents. IS-700.a is a NIMS Introduction. NIMS (National Incident Management System) is the federal implementation of the ICS system. Additionally, if you are likely to assume a supervisory role during an incident, IS-200.b (ICS for Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents) is required. Since any Net Control assignment is considered a supervisory role, it is highly recommended that all team members take this course as well because any member may be asked to take a NCS assignment at any time during an incident. IS-100.b is a prerequisite to taking IS-200.b. All three courses are free and only involve a few hours of your time. If classroom courses are preferred over online courses, email Worcester Emergency Management with your request. If enough people are interested (10+), we will be able to run a normal classroom session for any of these courses, again, free of charge. For more on this subject, see the Recommended Training page.