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understand the latest information about the emergency and
determine what types of assistance they can offer. Local
restaurants or fast-food chain stores also donate food to rescue
staff, community volunteers, and disaster survivors. Local
grocery stores work with county EM agencies and try to remain
open as usual in order to ensure that local residents can readily
buy food, water, and other necessities during and after the
disaster; such efforts are important for the public to pass from
the response stage to the recovery stage. A city emergency
manager gave an example of Walgreen’s and Wal-Mart
partnering with the city through signing a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) or Memorandum of Agreement (MOA).
Through these documents, they signal their intention to identify
the needs of the localities and provide assistance (ID15-1).
Private companies or local businesses also collaborate
frequently with local EM agencies during normal times. For
instance, some county EM directors have stated that they
collaborated with hardware stores such as Home-Depot or
Lowe’s prior to disasters by advocating EM preparedness
activities through sponsored TV commercials. Such
collaborative activities provide local EM agencies a free chance
to garner the attention of the public through a TV spotlight.
Another private partner of local EM agencies are theme parks,
which are large mass gathering areas. There are many famous
theme parks in the State of Florida attracting many visitors each
year. These theme parks tend to continuously train employees
to efficiently evacuate visitors in times of an emergency. Local
EM agencies work closely with theme parks to ensure they have
adequate resources to mitigate the potential disasters and to
respond if the need arises.
Non-governmental organizations such as the American
Red Cross, Salvation Army, United Way, Southern Baptist
Kitchen, and Goodwill are other groups which regularly
collaborate with local governments. In order to understand fully
the profession and capability in each non-governmental