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Preparedness Association or local EM councils) or attending
conferences and workshops.
County governments that are in the same state region of
EM frequently cooperate with each other. Each region has a
coordinator who is responsible for communicating with county
EM directors within the region about daily basic EM-related
issues and serving as the voice of the county government to the
state government. Counties in the same region may meet
quarterly to update each other’s EM information and working
progress. Communication by phone and e-mail occurs on a daily
basis to exchange work-related information is also common.
This helps counties understand and support each other. These
pre-event relationships and collaborations are markedly critical
in order for each county to develop a good working knowledge
of their local partners.
When a disaster or an infrequent event happens, the
administrative boundary becomes hard to define. The county
and its surrounding counties are like siblings, which face similar
risks and problems. Thus, they need to collaborate to address
the needs of the community. County-county collaboration
during a disaster is generally regulated by mutual aid agreements.
Such agreements are written between governmental agencies to
support each other and primarily cover the areas of fire, law
enforcement, and emergency medical services. Florida Statute
252.40 authorizes local governments in the State of Florida to
develop and sign mutual aid agreements within the state for the
purpose of “reciprocal emergency aid and assistance in case of
emergencies too extensive to be dealt with unassisted.”
According to an interviewee’s description, there are
currently three different types of mutual aid agreements: the
automatic aid agreement, the local mutual aid agreement, and
the statewide mutual aid agreement (ID10). The automatic aid
agreement is for dealing with a situation in which the
governmental agency recognizes that it does not have adequate