First Responders: Mutual Aid Agreements (Text Only)

First Responders

Mutual Aid Agreements: Support for First Responders outside Major Metropolitan Areas

Terrorists can strike anytime, anywhere. Crop dusters, power generating plants, dams and reservoirs, crops, livestock, trains and highways are among the resources that could be targets. Homeland security in the heartland is just as important as homeland security in America's largest cities.

First responders from communities outside major metropolitan areas who must protect large geographic areas with small populations face many response challenges. In fact, over half of our firefighters protect small or rural communities of fewer than 5,000 people. Many of these communities rely upon volunteer departments with scarce resources. Fewer than 10% of counties surveyed by the National Association of Counties said they are prepared to respond to a bioterrorist attack.

One of the best strategies to build capability in communities outside major metropolitan areas is to develop mutual aid agreements to share resources. First responders from smaller communities need assistance in organizing and developing the unified command and control procedures and protocols necessary for operationally sound mutual aid. These agreements will enable neighboring jurisdictions to share specialized resources, rather than duplicate them in every jurisdiction.

President Bush's 2003 budget provides $140 million to assist these communities in planning and establishing mutual aid agreements. While mutual cooperation and mutual aid agreements have existed over the years in support of civil defense, fire, and National Guard activities, this is the first time that the federal government has directly supported the establishment of mutual aid agreements with federal resources.

As an established mechanism for sharing or pooling limited resources to augment existing capabilities and supplementing jurisdictions that have exhausted existing resources due to disaster, mutual aid processes will help ensure that jurisdictions across the United States can benefit from each other’s efforts to enhance their first response capabilities. Jurisdictions can use the funding provided under this initiative to create or improve their response capabilities, without duplicating their efforts. Many areas have little or no capability to respond to terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction. Even the best prepared States and localities do not possess adequate resources to respond to the full range of terrorist threats we face.

Citizen Corps: Supporting the Community and our First Responders

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Americans have looked for and found many opportunities to help in their communities. President Bush created the USA Freedom Corps in an effort to capture those opportunities and foster an American culture of service, citizenship and responsibility. These volunteers are especially important in smaller communities where resources may be limited.

Citizen Corps is the arm of USA Freedom Corps that provides opportunities for citizens that want to help make their communities more secure. Since the President made his call to two years of volunteer service during his State of the Union address, there have been more than 1.6 million hits to the new www.citizencorps.gov web site. Almost 24,000 Americans from all 50 states and U.S. territories have volunteered to work with one or more of the Citizen Corps programs. These include:

More than 15,000 volunteers are looking to be trained in emergency response skills through FEMA’s Community Emergency Response Team program;
Almost 7,000 volunteers have signed up to get involved in Neighborhood Watch activities in their communities
More than 15,000 potential volunteers have expressed interest in the new Volunteers in Police Service and Operation TIPS programs being developed by the Department of Justice presently; and,
More than 5,000 potential volunteers have expressed an interest in joining a Medical Reserve Corps in their community as part of a program being developed by the Department of Health and Human Services to tap the skills of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals in times of community crisis.

First Responder Initiative

Facts about First Responders

There are over 1 million firefighters in the United States, of which approximately 750,000 are volunteers.
Local police departments have an estimated 556,000 full-time employees including about 436,000 sworn personnel.
Sheriffs' offices reported about 291,000 full-time employees, including about 186,000 sworn personnel.
There are over 155,000 nationally registered Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT).

The President's 2003 Budget proposes to spend $3.5 billion on enhancing the homeland security response capabilities of America's first responders -- a greater than 10-fold increase in Federal resources.

Strengthening America's first responder community will make our homeland safer. Nearly two million first responders regularly put their lives at risk to save lives and make our country safer.

Hundreds of firefighters, police officers and emergency medical workers gave their lives on September 11 as they worked to save others.

The First Responder Initiative will help these brave Americans do their jobs better. Building on existing capabilities at the Federal, State, and local level, the First Responder Initiative provides an incentive to develop mutually supportive programs that maximize effective response capability. Through joint planning, clear communication, comprehensive coordination, mutual aid at all levels and increased information sharing, America's first responders can be trained and equipped to save lives in the event of a terrorist attack.

The benefits of building first responder capability are immediate and widespread -- making the nation safer from terrorist attacks while also bolstering everyday response capabilities. Hundreds of firefighters, police officers and emergency medical workers gave their lives on September 11 as they worked to save others.

The benefits of building first responder capability are immediate and widespread -- making the nation safer from terrorist attacks while also bolstering everyday response capabilities.