U.S. Fire Administration/Technical Report Series: Success Story at Retirement Home Fire   [open pdf - 2MB]

"On December 16, 1989, at 1629 a security guard at the Sommerset Retirement Home, 22355 Providence Village Drive in Sterling, Virginia, called 9-1-1 to report that alarm bells were sounding and that smoke was in the building. The facility was a new (one-year-old) three-story retirement home housing elderly people in apartment units. [...] An Incident Command System (ICS) was established immediately to address three tasks simultaneously: establish an emergency shelter and quickly and safely move the residents to that staging area; conduct a thorough search of every apartment; and locate the seat of the fire and extinguish it."