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neighboring municipalities and local communities by organizing
meetings and speaking for the small municipalities when they
need to communicate with the county. When the big cities
successfully obtain grants from the federal government, they
usually serve as the funding-administrator for all other
municipalities in that area and distribute the funds based on the
needs or training in each municipality.
Sharing information and intelligence is another reason why
local governments collaborate with each other. Understanding
each other’s positions and making sure that everyone stays on
the same page are critical to the success of collaboration and EM
itself (ID5 & ID14).
Finally, many local EM directors indicate that they
collaborate with neighboring counties or municipalities because
of shared commonalities and similar risks. Put differently, for
local governments, community attributes seriously influence
who they should collaborate with. A county EM director stated
the following:
So I collaborate horizontally with my partner which is
south of me because we share a lot of emergency
management commonalities. When it comes to an
emergency, we’re going to deal with urban fire
issues, . . . or Hazmat issues. (ID12)
C. Activities and Rationales for Horizontal-
Intersectoral Collaboration
In the horizontal context, local governments not only
collaborate with other local governments but also work closely
with private companies and local businesses. For example, when
an Emergency Operation Center (EOC) is activated,
representatives from utility companies, telecom companies,
infrastructure providers, and local chambers of commerce or
economic development councils are seated on the EOC to