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Exploring the dynamics
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standardization, unit diversity, and fragmentation. Localism
means that the federal government relies heavily on
municipalities as the main responders when disasters occur.
Lack of standardization refers to the variation in how EM is
organized and undertaken between different places. Unit
diversity denotes the differences in the sizes and types of entities
responding to disasters. Fragmentation describes two situations:
1) the federal, state, and local governments’ approaches to EM
divergence causing the overall EM effort to face vertical strains;
and 2) separate entities viewing EM only from their own
perspectives, leading to horizontal conflicts across departments
and between neighboring jurisdictions.
The aforementioned characteristics of the U.S. EM system,
as well as the reasons described below, provide a strong
rationale for why collaboration in local EM is extremely
important: 1) local governments are the frontline units dealing
with emergencies. However, they currently have limited
resources; 2) the independence and diversity of local
governments are aspects respected by the federal system; and 3)
emergencies do not always occur within one jurisdiction. In the
U.S., EM traditionally follows a “bottom-up” system, in which
local EM organizations and governments address disasters and
emergencies first and seek help from their state government or
from adjacent local governments later. Help from the federal
government is perceived as a “last resort” and is sought only
when a state cannot respond to and recover from a disaster or
emergency using its own resources (Sylves, 2008). Federal
agencies own and provide substantial resources for EM and
national security. States often help to implement federal policies,
train communities in best practices, and funnel federal grants to
local units (McEntire & Dawson, 2007). Thus, as the frontline
units in dealing with emergencies, local governments rely
heavily on collaboration between different organizations to