Interstate disaster assistance pact grows

It's the best idea you've never heard of: the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, an interstate agreement that streamlines the assistance one governor can lend another after a natural disaster or terrorist attack.

The compact has spread from state to state since its inception in 1993, never attracting much attention or urgency. In New York, the state legislature considered the compact during two sessions in the 1990s, but something always derailed ratification: a controversial amendment, a more urgent issue, the end of a session. And the populous, prosperous Empire State could cope with most disasters on its own. Then came Sept. 11, 2001.

"Every state in the nation came calling, `What can we do to help?' " recalled Dennis Michalski, an assistant director of New York's State Emergency Management Office. The response "was heartwarming, to say the least."

Two dozen governors lent everything from administrators who helped manage the flood of donations to command-post operators who relieved New York City personnel so that they could get some sleep. But orchestrating all this goodwill could have become a bureaucratic nightmare. So six days after the attack, on September 17, New York state finally joined the compact.

To date, 46 states have ratified EMAC, up from 40 on Sept. 10. Alaska, Hawaii, and Wyoming are considering legislation to join, and the District of Columbia just passed its enabling law. The lone holdout is a big one: California. Still, the compact has political momentum and strong support.

The federal National Guard Bureau, whose state units provide much disaster relief, has actively encouraged states to sign on. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which directs federal help, even reserves space in its national command post for an EMAC liaison team.

One big lesson of the compact is that all roads do not have to lead to Washington. EMAC is an arrangement of the states, by the states, and for the states. The closest thing the compact has to a national headquarters is not even in Washington, but in the Lexington, Ky., offices of the National Emergency Management Association, itself an arm of the Council of State Governments.

The essence of the compact, said Trina Hembree, the association's executive director, is "states helping states, [and] really trying to develop their own capabilities and resources, rather than simply depending on the federal government for assistance."

This emphasis on self-reliance is new. Starting with the passage of the Federal Disaster Act in 1950, the federal government raised its spending on, and increased its influence in, the area of disaster relief; over the years, the states increasingly came to rely on Washington, sometimes even at the expense of their own initiative.

But in 1992, Hurricane Andrew hammered states across the South. Like 9/11, it was too extensive a disaster for any one state to handle alone.

"Andrew knocked down doors, literally and politically," said Keith Bea, an analyst with the Congressional Research Service. In the aftermath, then-Gov. Lawton Chiles of Florida proposed, and the 19-state Southern Governors' Association developed, a simplified system for interstate assistance. This Southern Regional Emergency Management Assistance Compact opened to other states around the country in 1995, and Congress ratified it into law as a national model in 1996.

So what does the compact actually do? States helped each other long before EMAC, through a variety of specific regional agreements and a nationwide civil defense compact dating from the 1950s. But states had no comprehensive and consistent national standard to turn to. So a tangle of legal questions had to be unraveled time and again: At what rate does the receiving state reimburse the donor? Who provides logistical support? If a worker from State A is injured in State B, which workers' compensation plan applies? If State A's worker, invited into State B, accidentally hurts someone, who is liable?

After all, when you're rushing to the rescue after a disaster, noted Lt. Col. Gerald Tipton of the National Guard Bureau, "the last thing you want is to be sued."

So state officials all too often ended up faxing furiously through the night as they tried to nail down legal minutiae while the floodwaters rose. But with the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, "we don't have to go through all that discussion in the throes of a disaster," said Eric Tolbert, North Carolina's director of emergency management. "All of the legal questions and financial questions are answered in the actual compact itself," and in advance.

In a crisis, "all we have to do is fill out a form," added Quentin Banks of Maryland's Emergency Management Agency. The afflicted state's request for help then goes out over a secure electronic network to the other compact members, who reply with what relevant assets they can send--and, significantly, with an estimate of the costs.

A rotating national chairmanship (currently held by North Carolina) and advance teams on the ground broker the requests and counteroffers so that the afflicted state can focus on the disaster, not on the administrative details.

Since 1993, the compact has sped the sharing of everything from ferry boats to military police, in incidents ranging from wildfires to ice storms. In 1999's Hurricane Floyd, 14 states lent more than 500 workers to North Carolina alone.

"EMAC has a proven track record," said Doug Hoell, the North Carolina official who currently serves as the compact's national coordinator. Nevertheless, he added, "it's a program that's still very much in its infancy."

One problem is that the compact is not yet national. California--so large, it's almost a nation unto itself--has not yet even introduced implementing legislation. Ironically, one obstacle is that California already has one of the most sophisticated emergency management systems in the nation. Wealthy, big, and prone to earthquakes and wildfires, the state has had the incentive and the resources to develop elaborate arrangements for mutual aid both inside the state and with its neighbors, including Mexico.

The problem is that these long-standing and much-used agreements resolve key details such as worker benefits in ways very different from EMAC.

"We're still looking at some of the legal ramifications," said Dallas Jones, director of the Governor's Office of Emergency Services in Sacramento. Even after September 11, he added, "it's an open question" whether California will sign on at all.

Hembree, of the National Emergency Management Association, is optimistic. "We fully expect 50-state participation," she said.

California's accession would make EMAC the kind of national standard that homeland security experts advocated long before Sept. 11. Hembree said that her association has briefed Tom Ridge's Office of Homeland Security on the compact, "and we hope that EMAC can be adopted as the nation's mutual aid system."

The compact's architects are already at work on their next step: a 50-state database of available assets, sorted into standardized categories to make it easier and faster to arrange assistance in times of crisis. Just as EMAC already specifies in advance the legal framework for interstate aid, the new system will pre-specify the actual assistance to be given. If a hurricane-struck state needs a field hospital, what specialties should its doctors know, and what medicines should they be sure to bring? If a state needs trucks, what kind?

So emergency managers are developing standardized aid "packages," detailing exactly which people, skills, and equipment each package should have. Then, in a crisis, states can quickly select assistance from the menu, similar to a customer ordering the No. 3 meal deal at a fast-food restaurant.

"We'll all be ordering from the same catalog, [and] you will know for sure that this resource has met minimum certification and qualification standards," said North Carolina's Hoell. What's more, a constantly updated database will show afflicted states what other compact members have available, even before they ask for aid.

"It'll take years" to put this ambitious system into place, Hoell admitted, "[and] we don't have the source of funding, frankly."

Compact membership requires a fee, but it is only $1,000 per year per state, and payment is voluntary. State officials are in talks with FEMA about a joint venture; so far, Hoell said, "we have gotten positive feedback but no commitment."

FEMA certainly supports the compact. Although both federal and state systems can provide tangible assistance during disasters, state assets are often closer to the scene, noted one FEMA official, so "they may be able to do it quicker and cheaper."

But conversely, EMAC is no rival to FEMA. The states emphasize that the compact does not and cannot even attempt to replace FEMA's financial resources, especially its prized grants and loans for reconstruction after disasters. Although the roles of FEMA and the compact do overlap in some ways, in a major disaster there would be plenty of work to go around. The two systems complement each other more than they compete.

So what is the difference between the two? It's not that one is top-down while the other is bottom-up (indeed, the FEMA philosophy is to give support, not orders). It is more that FEMA is a vertical link, from the federal government to the states, while EMAC is horizontal, from one state to another.

American government has largely got the vertical dimension down: Information and assistance flow fairly easily up and down in their traditional bureaucratic "stovepipes," be it from the FBI down to local sheriffs, or from a National Guard sergeant up to the commanding general. It is the horizontal connections that are often absent.

When weapons of mass destruction are the threat, a disaster may not be confined to one jurisdiction. And a centralized, top-down system of control may not have all the answers, or be able to keep up with a quickly changing crisis. Instead, experts increasingly call for a crisis management system modeled on the Internet: a set of common standards and connections that eases nationwide cooperation without compromising local flexibility. The Emergency Management Assistance Compact just might be a big part of that answer.