Incident command for volunteer response.
Muster runs the ICS side of an event: the roster, the posts, the comms plan, the incident log and the paperwork that has to exist afterwards. It is built around events rather than around a dispatch center, because that is how volunteer organizations actually work.
Command works on a laptop at the net desk. Everybody else works on a phone, often with one bar and one hand.
- Real ICS forms
- The 205 and 205A fill themselves in from the plan you already built. The 211, 214 and 221 come out of what actually happened. They are the genuine FEMA forms, not a lookalike, because the agency you hand them to knows the difference.
- Works when the network does not
- Status changes and log entries queue on the device and sync when coverage returns, carrying the time they happened rather than the time they arrived. Radio stays the channel of record. This is the receipt.
- Careful with people
- Incidents are non-identifying by construction. Volunteer phone numbers are shown to whoever is entitled to see them and to nobody else, and next-of-kin details never reach a printed form.