Intrastate Mutual Aid Agreements Improve Emergency Response Within States

The Emergency Management Assistance Compact,

administered by the National Emergency Management

Association, gained national recognition in 2005 after

coordinating deployment of more than 66,000 people to the Gulf

Coast after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The next step in the process

was the development of intrastate agreements, which make it possible

for local jurisdictions with assets from all disciplines to be deployed

under the larger interstate mutual aid agreement.

By Beverly Bell

It started with a twister.On Sunday, May 25, 2008, an EF-5 tornado roared through the town

of Parkersburg, Iowa. The small community of fewer than 2,000 resi-dents was ripped in two, with one side relatively untouched, the other side decimated. Winds reached more than 200 miles per hour. Eight people were killed in the tornado.

The same weather pattern that produced the storm—the fi rst of its magnitude to hit Iowa in 32 years—also generated record-breaking rainfall throughout the region in the spring. Rivers swelled over their banks in Minnesota, fl ooding downstream into Iowa and Missouri. But it wasn’t the Mississippi River that bore the brunt of the fl ooding; inte-rior basins including the Cedar, Raccoon and Des Moines rivers took the hardest hit.

That endangered countless small communities with fewer resources. After rivers crested, offi cials assessed the damage caused by the fl ood-ing. Thousands of homes and businesses, as well as millions of dollars in crops, were destroyed. At the latest count, 85 of Iowa’s 99 counties were eligible for federal disaster assistance.

Despite the widespread devastation, Iowa’s communities were able to deploy resources to other areas in the state.

Jerry Ostendorf of the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division credits the state’s extensive internal mutual aid system—its intrastate agreements—for the effective response and re-covery efforts.

“That’s what mutual aid has done for us, getting us better prepared and becoming a true emergency management family,” said Ostendorf, who also serves as the Emergency Management Assistance Compact Executive Task Force Committee chair.

Mutual AidThe 2008 Iowa fl oods represented one of the worst natural disasters

to ever hit that state. But the fl oods also offered proof to the country’s strengthening mutual aid system, which works behind the scenes.

At the heart of the mutual aid system are special intrastate mutual aid agreements, the legal documents that provide a framework for lo-cal jurisdictions to share resources quickly when a disaster occurs, while ensuring reimbursement and liability protection of personnel.

They allow communities to help each other—areas impacted by di-sasters are able to access assistance faster and more effi ciently than ever before.

Intrastate agreements are the foundation of the most effective mu-tual aid response because they make it possible for local jurisdictions with assets from all disciplines to be deployed under the larger in-terstate mutual aid agreement, according to the Emergency Manage-ment Assistance Compact. The agreements are the difference between knowing the full extent of available resources before a disaster strikes and trying to locate equipment and staff during the stress and pressure of an emergency.

EMAC, administered by the National Emergency Management As-sociation, is an interstate agreement that allows states to share resourc-es—including National Guard troops and state assets under control of the governor—across state lines. All 50 states, the District of Colum-bia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are members of EMAC.

EMAC gained national recognition following hurricanes Katrina and Rita when more than 66,000 people were deployed to the Gulf

the council of state governments www.csg.org 31

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with intrastate agreements more than doubled in 2006 to 35. That number jumped to 40 states in 2008.

With each consecutive disaster, states were learning an important lesson—established intrastate agree-ments connect and form a compre-hensive network of assistance that en-ables states to seamlessly deploy local jurisdictions within the state or across state lines under EMAC. It also opens up to the entire emergency manage-ment community additional resourc-es, equipment and people that could potentially help disaster victims.

Call for Help AnsweredIowa found out just how important

that was this year.Help for Parkersburg, in northeast-

ern Butler County, Iowa, came from cities and towns all over the state, such as Davenport, Council Bluffs

32 state news october 2008

jurisdiction, such as a city or county, rather than a state.

Since this model was introduced, the growth and appeal of intrastate agree-ments have mirrored the country’s ex-periences with disasters. In 2004, 11 states had multi-discipline, intrastate mutual aid agreements in place. Anoth-er 16 had either proposed legislation or had discipline-specifi c agreements. The adoption of these agreements coincid-ed with four hurricanes hitting Florida in a six-week period in 2004. More than 800 emergency management per-sonnel from 38 EMAC-member states and California supported operations in Florida, Alabama and West Virginia for 99 consecutive days. It was the larg-est utilization of state-to-state mutual aid at the time—intrastate mutual aid agreements at work.

After the destructive 2005 hurri-cane season and the unprecedented EMAC response, the number of states

“EMAC lowers the anxiety level because you know your folks are safe. It makes you feel pretty good, sending your people off” under the protection of the compact.

—Joe Neuberger, senior commander St. Paul, Minn., Police Department

Coast under the compact in 2005. It represented the largest mutual aid re-sponse in the nation’s history and oc-curred less than 10 years after EMAC became the fi rst national disaster-relief agreement to be ratifi ed by Congress since the Civil Defense Compact of 1950.

The next natural progression in the EMAC system was the creation of an intrastate agreement.

In 2004, NEMA developed the Na-tional Model Intrastate Mutual Aid Legislation in cooperation with various response and recovery disciplines. It in-cluded the same basic elements of the interstate agreement and addressed the same critical issues: reimbursement, workers’ compensation, recognition of licenses and permits, relationship with existing mutual aid agreements and member responsibilities.

The difference: The intrastate agreement is geared toward a local

the council of state governments www.csg.org 33

and Belmond. Because these areas weren’t heavily affected by the fl ood-ing, they could deploy requested as-sets to parts of the state that needed them.

On the other hand, Ostendorf, of the state’s emergency manage-ment division, said, “If you’ve got resources and you’re impacted (by the disaster), you’re not obligated to send the resources.”

The choice to deploy is always up to the assisting entity.

One community outside the state that answered the call for help was St. Paul, Minn. Within 48 hours of re-ceiving a request from Cedar Rapids for patrol support, the St. Paul Police Department deployed 24 command staff and offi cers to the stricken area under EMAC.

Senior Commander Joe Neuberg-er said the department responded immediately because an intrastate agreement was already in place and the city’s administration understood the agreement as well as EMAC. This allowed St. Paul offi cials to sign the paperwork and the police depart-ment to mobilize the offi cers without delay.

“EMAC lowers the anxiety level because you know your folks are safe,” Neuberger said. “It makes you feel pretty good, sending your people off” under the protection of the com-pact.

It hasn’t always been that way. Just ask Ostendorf, a 20-year veteran of emergency management. He said dealing with a disaster as a member of EMAC is much different than it was before.

One event that stands out for the Iowa mutual aid coordinator is the 1993 fl ood, which affected nine states throughout the Midwest and Great Plains. Iowa alone received more than 45 inches of rain over a fi ve-month period. All 99 counties were included in disaster declara-tions.

Because EMAC was new and lim-ited to the Southern region of the U.S. at that time, Ostendorf said there wasn’t a centralized point of coordi-nation for assets from other states.

“In ’93, we defi nitely used re-sources from outside the state, but there was no operational process and protocol to effectively activate, de-ploy and embed them,” he said. “It was kind of hit and miss.”

There was also no Web-based broadcast system to share the re-quests or sophisticated emergency management software to facilitate and organize the response and recov-ery effort that was required, he said.

EMAC growth and evolution throughout the nation changed ev-erything, according to Ostendorf. Its operational system provides the es-sential fl exibility to manage the ebb and fl ow of a disaster, such as the 2008 fl ood.

“It’s not just a program,” Osten-dorf said. “EMAC is a resource man-agement tool.”

That’s why the compact played such an important role in the 2005 hurricane season response. Even while intrastate agreements were still a fairly new concept, approxi-mately 15 percent of the assets de-ployed from local jurisdictions were brought in under intrastate agree-ments. In terms of personnel, that is nearly 10,000 people from dozens of disciplines deployed under these agreements.

Making the Most of Limited Resources

Disasters—at least in the begin-ning—are local.

A disaster fi rst impacts the commu-nity where it occurs. That communi-ty has to deal with the immediate de-struction before any state or federal resources are available, according to EMAC. However, fi nancial reali-ties make it impossible for a city to purchase everything that might be required for a disaster or emergency. Mutual aid is often the answer.

As intrastate agreements are devel-oped, jurisdictions learn about each other’s resources. They know what’s available and where it’s located. In tough economic times and diminish-ing budgets, shared equipment and personnel can often bridge the gap

between demand and supply. A state or community isn’t buying anything new, Ostendorf said. It’s using what’s already there.

At the same time, intrastate agree-ments can make a jurisdiction less reliant on the federal government. By clearly identifying and classify-ing nearby resources, a community is better positioned to handle its own emergency, Ostendorf said. Larger or catastrophic disasters will most likely require federal assistance, but intrastate agreements can result in greater autonomy for all jurisdictions during more manageable events.

Intrastate agreements also encour-age relationships between towns, counties, states and regions. Fed-eral funding through various grant programs has allowed communities to build their disaster management capacities, both in terms of equip-ment and personnel. These same grants have also provided the means for multi-state and multi-jurisdiction training and exercises, so various agencies know how to work together when a disaster occurs. Intrastate agreements capitalize on these in-vestments, providing a solid struc-ture in which to share and request resources.

In essence, intrastate agreements help build a stronger and unifi ed na-tional mutual aid system.

To ensure those deployed know what they’re doing, EMAC has initi-ated new training, including a multi-discipline course to help profes-sionals from different fi elds become better acquainted with the compact before a possible deployment. This could include everyone from fi re-fi ghters to public health, from law enforcement to public works.

The goal of the training is to ed-ucate local and state offi cials on EMAC so when an intrastate agree-ment is implemented, the system will work well on all levels and ultimately serve those impacted by a disaster.

—Beverly Bell is a policy analyst with the National Emergency Management Association.