Local, State, and Federal Partnerships: Natural-Accidental Disasters
Local, State, and Federal Partnerships: Natural/Accidental Disasters
1)National Response Framework. Review areas specifically pertinent to local, state, and federal
government leaders and emergency management practitioners (pp. 11-19).
2)You will also need to become familiar with the “memorandum of understanding� approach to
cooperative engagements.
a)Provide two examples of a memorandum of understanding. Explain why you chose these examples.
b)Explain why it is advantageous to have a reciprocal emergency response agreement with the town or
city that adjoins your town or city. Give examples.
Local, State, and Federal Partnerships: Natural-Accidental Disasters
a) Provide two examples of a memorandum of understanding. Explain why you chose
these examples
The two examples of memorandum of understanding that have been observed in this document
are found in the section that discusses the emergency responses in tribal areas as well as the
responses that are offered by federal departments.
Under Tribes: “The NRF’s Tribal Coordination Support Annex outlines processes and
mechanisms that tribal governments may use to request direct Federal assistance during an
incident regardless of whether or not the incident involves a Stafford Act declaration. ”
The reason why this is considered to be a memorandum is the fact that it details a mutual
agreement between the various native Indian tribes and the Federal government. The
memorandum is expressly detailed under the heading of the “NRF tribal Coordination Support
Annex.” The reason for this memorandum is to ensure that the different tribal regions get the
assistance they need in the event of an emergency. The reason for this is that many of the tribal
regions are remote and lack resources necessary to enable them adequately respond to different
natural disasters and man-made emergencies. The federal government on the other hand does
have these resources as well as the capacity to adequately handle the emergencies. As such it
became necessary for this memorandum that obligates the federal government to provide
emergency assistance.
Under Federal Departments: “All Federal departments and agencies must cooperate with one
another, and with local, state, tribal, territorial, and insular area governments, community
members, and the private sector to the maximum extent possible. Although Federal disaster
assistance is often considered synonymous with Presidential declarations under the Stafford Act,
Federal assistance can actually be provided to state and local jurisdictions, as well as to other
Federal departments and agencies, through a number of different mechanisms and authorities.”
The above extract also qualifies to be a memorandum of understanding. In this scenario unlike
the above one where one of the parties bears the obligation, all the parties have a shared
responsibility to provide the other department with the necessary assistance that is required. The
reason for this memorandum is the fact that different departments are specialized in different
areas and different emergency situations call for different tangible and intangible resources.
b) Explain why it is advantageous to have a reciprocal emergency response agreement
with the town or city that adjoins your town or city. Give examples
A reciprocal emergency response arrangement with a city or town adjoining the one I live in is
advantageous in that it guarantees immediate and quicker assistance in the event that the
emergency situation in the jurisdiction of local authorities in my region. This could be a road
accident that has occurred near a border region, it is ideally the responsibility of our local
authorities to respond but it will be more effective if the situation is handled by the response
team that is closest even if it is from the neighboring town. At times a coordinated effort is
crucial for the effective handling of large scale operations such as preparedness for a natural
calamity such as a flood or forest fire which has no respect for regional boundaries. The
agreement will facilitate more effective responses with operations like evacuation and rescue
missions being carried out with more resources available for use (National Response Framework,
n.d.).
Reference
National Response Framework. Review areas specifically pertinent to local, state, and federal
government leaders and emergency management practitioners.
