Early mutual aid systems

MABAS, one of the oldest mutual aid systems, began to form in 1968, when local departments in rural areas of Illinois and along the Illinois and Wisconsin border raced from one jurisdiction to another during significant emergencies. They formed a mutual aid pact that facilitated the easy exchange of support.

By the early 1990s, the cooperation agreement was only adopted by 13 of the 225 suburban fire departments north of Chicago. However, after the Oklahoma City bombing, Illinois' governor asked MABAS, the largest state organization of its kind, to become the central point of contact for state emergencies. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the organization has burgeoned and now includes more than 1,300 member agencies in Illinois.

At the same time, Illinois and neighboring states around the Great Lakes adopted similar mutual aid agreements and began coordinating their own intrastate plans, which greatly expanded the capacity to assist during emergencies. By 2007, the states had formed the Mid-America Mutual Aid Consortium, which includes all the Great Lakes states, Iowa and Missouri. “It allows us to move across state borders and work together,” Reardon says. “We don't want to wind up with six systems. We are working to gather information, so we know what each state has on its books, and to identify any obstacles.”

Though MABAS works primarily within each state, with a network extending among contiguous states, it can assist nationally as well, as shown by its response to Hurricane Katrina, Reardon says. He notes that Louisiana sent out a request for 596 firefighters and 120 vehicles, and Illinois sent the personnel and the equipment within 72 hours. Ultimately, the mission expanded to a six-week assignment, involving 900 personnel and 200 vehicles that rotated every two weeks.

The Resources Ordering Status System (ROSS), the mutual aid group that evolved in the Western states, is slightly different from MABAS because it plans more for wildfires than the home and business emergencies more common in Eastern urban areas. Also, ROSS's command center first identifies the needed resources and their costs at the emergency site and then deploys them as efficiently as possible. While mutual aid systems like MABAS stand ready to send in their teams if called upon, ROSS acts more like a clearinghouse database that field workers can tap into. “In situations like wildfires that are battled over time, efficiency is important,” Rhodes says. “It's important to follow the dollar flow.” He also points out that fires on federally owned land are handled by federal resources, so a strong level of cooperation is essential.

Building cooperation

Rhodes also encourages fire chiefs to engage in broad-based disaster planning. Through his work on the IAFC Emergency Management Committee, Rhodes is building models for emergency response that can be used throughout North America and reproduced in other areas around the world. He says the protocols can be summarized simply as “how to be a good host and a good guest.” The goal is to build alliances by educating first responders and officials at every level. “We want fire services to work with emergency managers,” Rhodes says.

A goal of broadening the alliance is to coordinate better with the law enforcement community, according to Dwight Henninger, Vail, Colo., police chief. Henninger is the representative of the Alexandria, Va.-based International Association of Chiefs of Police on IAFC's Emergency Management Committee. “We've shown there is a need to move people, and there is more understanding about the need for mutual aid,” he says. But, he notes that establishing the rules for cooperation is complicated. “Fire folks are more used to moving resources across boundaries,” Henninger says. “But with Katrina and other events, there's more awareness of the need for police presence from other communities on large emergency scenes.”

Laws governing police powers vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and state to state. “We have to establish how we provide the officers the powers to be a good cop,” Henninger says. Such crucial questions have stopped intercommunity cooperation in the past, he says. “Police powers are more complicated than crossing jurisdictions to put out fires. Police have to have the powers to arrest and shoot weapons.”

In addition, police are becoming more aware of a need to participate in coordinated command and control at emergency scenes. In the past, each response team — firefighters, law enforcement, public works and public health — often had established their own control centers. “We need to work together to form a unified command,” he says.

Spurred by Hurricane Andrew's devastation in Florida in the early 1990s, EMAC has worked to coordinate interstate emergency response. The compact started as cooperation between Southern states and has evolved into a national interstate network.

While mutual aid agreements like MABAS work with local government units, EMAC aims at the state level, says Angela Copple, who heads EMAC's staff. Once the local agencies ask the governor to declare an emergency and the state agency determines that out-of-state assistance is required, EMAC is contacted. “We determine the best fit to get the resource filled,” she says. “In general, EMAC is less costly than federal support. States are willing to help one another with their own resources.”

For example, she says that in Katrina's aftermath, Iowa assisted Louisiana with newborn screening. With their hospital systems under extreme stress, Louisiana sent blood samples to Iowa to ensure that newborns were not overlooked amidst the chaos. Other assistance can be less dramatic, she says. In the recent tornados in Tennessee, she noted that North Carolina helped coordinate donations.

Like the other mutual agreements, EMAC's protocols covering payment and liabilities are established well in advance, so assistance becomes the immediate priority rather than ironing out details. “It's easier to get on the road, out the door, if it's all taken care of ahead of time,” Copple says. After the mission is completed, the assisting state simply sends a reimbursement request to receive a check.

Still, with all the attention devoted to mutual assistance and disaster planning, the money for building the systems remain “very tight,” Copple says. “We really operate on a shoestring budget.”

In 2004, FEMA gave EMAC $2.1 million, and last year, it received an additional $1.5 million grant, Copple says. The organization is working to become part of the federal budget rather than relying on grants. “It impacts our ability to help,” she says. “We would like to expand our services. But, for that, we need consistent funding.”

Robert Barkin is a Bethesda, Md.-based freelance writer.