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Is your Emergency Management Coordinator in charge of your Mutual Aid calls?
Our county is staffed by volunteer firemen in three fire districts.
We have had Mutual Aid agreements with our surrounding counties for about 30 years now. It has always worked very well at getting the most help to where it is needed quickly. We have a new county Emergency Management Coordinator that wants to rewrite our Mutual Aid agreements. He wants to create a Strike Team and to also put himself in command any time the fire trucks leave the county. Does anyone else operate this way?
We have had Mutual Aid agreements with our surrounding counties for about 30 years now. It has always worked very well at getting the most help to where it is needed quickly. We have a new county Emergency Management Coordinator that wants to rewrite our Mutual Aid agreements. He wants to create a Strike Team and to also put himself in command any time the fire trucks leave the county. Does anyone else operate this way?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by PFC Harmon on
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In my area the OIC is in charge of all mutail aid companies, if we leave the county the ranking officer will answer to the requesting counties OIC. Hope that makes sense.
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Permalink Reply by Chief Tal Mong on
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I was just reading through all the discussions and this one really caught my eye! So I read what you had written several times. Then I asked my wife who is the Emergency Management Director for our County, and asked her the same question, her reply, why fix something if it's not broke !!!! We have Strike Teams that were set-up by the State for the different disciplines or all hazards mutual aid. These Strike Teams have certain criteria they must meet regarding staffing, equipment and training. These Strike Teams are Regionally based resource, not the same as a USAR Team. As well as the State Mutual Aid Agreement for all fire departments. One phone call and you can order a lot of people and equipment, but no matter what, the Incident Commander is still in charge! My question would be, is your new Emergency Management Coordinator, the EMC for the other 2 Counties as well? If not, his name may be the only name signed on the mutual aid agreement! Just because you write and agreement, doesn't mean the other parties will sign! Do the other Counties have their own Emergency Management Coordinators? If so, what are their opinions to this new process?
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I know what the chiefs around my parts would say and probably tell him to get lost at any point that he would try and take command of any of our scenes.
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Permalink Reply by chele on
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Hah! Our sentiment exactly!! "If it ain't broke why fix it?" has been our question all along. We are willing to support the Strike Team idea, but only for calls beyond our Mutual Aid agreements. The Strike Team consists of sending one truck from each of the three fire districts in our county. We have mutual aid agreements will all bordering counties, including two in Oklahoma. The Mutual Aid agreement allows us to share fire fighting with the bordering counties, sending as many trucks as we can. Normally that would be more than the three trucks allowed by the Strike Team. The Strike Team has delayed response time by as much as an hour while waiting for the other two trucks from the county to meet so we can all travel together. It's messed up. With Mutual Aid we respond within minutes.
Our EMC is not the EMC for any other county.
Our IC is generally whoever arrives on scene first! That would normally be either the Fire Chief, one of the Assistant Fire Chiefs or another experienced fireman.
We were just notified of the proposed change today, so we are still making contact with the counties involved to see what their thoughts are on this issue. At this point I have talked to nearly all of our firemen and nobody supports the propsed change. We are exploring our options on how to stop it from happening.
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Well, that's kind of what we have done - thumb our nose up at him and go about our business of fighting fire like we've always done. Now he's gotten the backing of the County Commisioners. I thought maybe if this was a national trend or something it would be (tough to swallow) tolerable.
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Permalink Reply by Rob on
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ABSOLUTELY NOT!
First off the EMA needs to look at what they should be doing. They are there to facilitate and coordinate getting resources for entities within your county in times of disater (manmade or natural) not go play supervisor when you have to go help the neighbor. The only time we have any issue that even comes close to this is under some instances when we cross county lines we may notify the State of Ohio Fire Chiefs rep for our area but this is usually limited to big incidents. If a department sits on a county line and goes mutual aid to the neighboring department (who just happens to be in the other county) this does not nessecarily have to happen. Now on the other hand if we are going to the other side of the neighboring county this might be an issue, but at no time does the EMA send someone out to be "in charge" of anything, that is just not what they are there for. Fortunately none of the counties in this area are as small in population as what it sounds like yours is so there are multiple departments in each county and it is very rare for the Ohio Fire Chief's Mutual Aid Plan to be invoked. The last time I can think of was the big blackout that ran from NY City all the way in to NE Ohio and they called up tankers from all over the state because they had no (or very little) capacity to run well pumps and all the cities in the metro Cleveland area are used to using hydrants and don't have very many tankers available. At that time the EMA only got a call letting them know that "X" number of tankers would be out of the county for an extended period of time for the deployment.
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Permalink Reply by Fireyladd - Retired Chief Sharp on
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Sounds to me like the County Chiefs Association needs to remind this person who's in charge.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Kerp on
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No not any more, We had the same experience though, but when the County almost got sued because of a poor judgment call, his castle of BS collapsed. Now we have the old mutual aid agreement that has worked for years, and we have had no more problems. In fact we don’t have the same emergency management director either.
This is a case of swell head syndrome and it will cure its self in time, sit back and watch.
Be Safe!!
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Good morning, don't underestimate the reach of the Emergency Management Coordinator, it's as high as it is in width. However, if all departments involved are not in agreement, they should approach your Coordinator and explain your side of the issues. If that doesn't pan out, then each of the parties envolved should go to the County Commisioners. If anything needs be fixed from what your telling us, it would be, " why it takes an hour for your Strike Team to deploy"? Rob is right, there's been a lot of planning over the years for the Ohio Emergency Response Plan, and I can't imagine that being invoked ever. If I'm not mistaken, the OERP has been activated 5 or 6 times over that past couple of years. Our County almost used the Plan from the Hurrican force winds that came though the Ohio Valley a year ago. In 14 hours throughout our County, there were between 600 700 different calls in that time frame. Getting off the subject a little! I think every department should have some type of working relationship with the Emergency Management Directors/Coordinators, they have a lot of resources at their disposal and the ability to make things happen. Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery, that's why our Emergency Management Director is in almost every aspect of our Village and County EOP!
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"Good morning, don't underestimate the reach of the Emergency Management Coordinator, it's as high as it is in width." Our plan/hope it to keep it under control!
When the Strike Team/Strike Force idea was proposed, we were lead to believe it would be activated for "once in a lifetime fires" or for things such as the Greensburg tornado. We were told it would improve response time "by having a plan". We were in Greensburg an hour after the tornado hit - we're 45 mins away. It just doesn't get much better! (keep in mind EMS and fire are volunteers and respond from home)
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We haven't talked to one of the departments about it yet because the chief had not yet gotten his mail. I'll know more later. He's in between a rock and a hard spot though because the EMC and the EMC's brother and Dad are on his fire department. They have a tiny department, to lose the three of them would be to lose about half the department and no hope of replacing them. This department is in the SW corner of the county about 30 miles from my town.
The other department is down to 8 firemen; some left because of the Strike Team. The chief supports the Strike Team idea, but is finding it hard to participate since our EMC thinks we need to go to every fire in Oklahoma as a strike team. This department is in the NW corner of the county about 30 miles from my town.
Our department is the largest, with two tankers, two 2 ton grass rigs, two 1 ton grass rigs, a county/mutual structure truck, a city structure truck, the rehab and the "chief mobile". We have about 20 very active firemen and about a dozen more that seem to come out of nowhere just when we really need them. Our department is in the SE corner of the county.
The NE corner of our county is mostly in another county's fire district.
The reason it takes so long to deploy on Strike Team is because as luck would have it most of the Oklahoma fires have been south and east of us. We have to sit and wait while ranchers drive to the fire stations 30 miles away and then drive here to leave together.
The way we have always done it for Mutual Aid is if a fire is in the East or SE or NE then our department and the NW department would respond with mutual aid - two trucks and a tanker from us, one truck and a tanker for the other. This results in three grass rigs and two tankers leaving simultaneously and arriving within minutes of each other. The SW department covers the county. We always leave at least one grass rig at home.
Not hard to understand why we're not eager to change, is it? I just hope we actually have the power to fight him AND the County Commissioners - they back him.
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