Mutual Aid in North Carolina

North Carolina's Mutual Aid System is based on the premise that it makes sound economic and logistic sense to share some types of emergency response equipment and resources since no community can own and maintain all of the resources that might be needed to respond to any given event.

The obvious benefit of joining the Mutual Aid System is having access to all of the state's response capability without incurring the costs to purchase, maintain and insure an inventory of underused resources. Participating in the system provides efficient and effective assistance among governments, as well as faster reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Participants
The Mutual Aid System is a voluntary agreement among North Carolina municipalities to share resources during a disaster. All 100 counties, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and nearly three-fourths of the 650 municipalities have signed the mutual aid agreement. (See full participants list in WebEOC File Library under Mutual Aid Agreements.)

History
The Mutual Aid System was developed following Hurricane Fran in 1996. At that time there was no uniform agreement among North Carolina's cities and counties so they could help one another during and after disasters. With no policies and procedures to address logistics, deployment, compensation and liability issues, intra-state cooperation was limited and inefficient.

Then Gov. Jim Hunt formed a task force to address long-term recovery needs from the storm. The group recommended developing a statewide mutual aid agreement. The League of Municipalities and the N.C. Association of County Commissioners developed the statewide mutual aid agreement and distributed it to county governments and municipalities. The N.C. Division of Emergency Management serves as the repository for the agreement.

Contact
NCEM Exercise Officer - 919-825-2772

Mutual Aid Agreement forms can be found in WebEOC