Scientists have extensively debated the effectiveness of different emer gency response management models, with a particular focus on the "command and control" versus "coordination" models. This debate, which focuses on centra lized coordination at the tactical and strategic levels, assumes that the activity of frontline units within and between response organizations must be aligned and that it is possible to exercise control over frontline units. In this article, we discuss these assumptions and argue that researchers over estimate the degree to which frontline units can and should be centrally coordinated during the acute phase of emergency situations. Instead, we provide a mechanism in which coordination naturally emerges from the task at hand when frontline units follow a few simple decision rules. In addition, two managerial intervention strategies are presented that only may work in specific situations when frontline units are likely to misin terpret the environment in which they operate.

The widespread use of Twitter by citizens during sudden crises has convinced communications experts that governments should also actively use Twitter during crises. However, this position seems insufficiently empirically validated. In this article, we want to provide empirical building blocks for an informed approach to the use of Twitter by the government. To this end, we analyze the tweets posted by citizens and governments about the large‐scale fire in Moerdijk (2011), the Netherlands. The results show that by far, most tweets do not contain any new and relevant information for governments and that the tweets posted by governments got buried under an avalanche of citizen tweets. We may conclude that the Moerdijk case does not give rise to advocate a (more) active role of governments on Twitter during sudden crises.

Boin et al. (International Review of Public Administration, 18, 2013, 79) and others propose that public crisis leadership consists of several core tasks, among which crisis decision‐making and meaning making stand out in “flash crises.” We however argue that successful leadership during a sudden crisis implies being visible and appealing to the public in need of hearing that the shattered world will be healed. When being visible and using the right rhetoric, public leaders are by and large automatically considered proficient crisis decision makers, that is “the right leader in the right place at the right time.”

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In this paper, we attempt to get a better understanding of command and control practices of incident commanders from Dutch fire services (battalion chiefs, BCs) by examining the recordings made by helmet‐mounted cameras during 55 real incidents. The aim is to examine the degree to which the BCs issued orders to front‐line workers and the degree to which these orders were carried out appropriately. The results indicate that incident commanders were able to influence the work at the front line, but were generally not in control of what happened at the front line.