Title
Approval of Interlocal Agreement for Mutual Aid for Firefighting and Emergency Medical Services
Recommended Action
Committee Recommendation:
N/A
City Manager Recommendation:
Move to approve the Interlocal Agreement for Mutual Aid for Firefighting and Emergency Medical Services for the Mayor's signature.
Report
Issue:
Thurston County Fire and Emergency Medical Services departments regularly assist each other through mutual aid. The current agreement is due for signature. Several small changes were made but the agreement is essentially unchanged from the previous version that has served all parties well.
Staff Contact:
Greg Wright, Deputy Fire Chief, 360.753.8466
Presenter(s):
Greg Wright, Deputy Fire Chief
Background and Analysis:
Thurston County Fire and Emergency Medical Services agencies have had a county wide mutual aid agreement for many years. The agreement allows the sharing of resources for large events and/or routine events if an agency's resources are already committed on other calls. The agreement is voluntary. If at any time an agency does not have any resources to share, there is no requirement to send requested resources. Because the aid flows in both directions during the life of the agreement there is no cost accounting required.
The most recent agreement has technically expired so it is important to move quickly to re-establish this agreement. While the agreement was open, two new items were added to the base document.
Item one is the calling out of Automatic Mutual Aid that was not clearly defined in the previous document. Automatic Mutual Aid is the practice of pre-designating that one agency will automatically send resources (if available) to a specific area and that request will be built into the dispatch process, it is not required that the host agency make the request each time. This is useful in areas where another agency is closer to a small portion of the host agency's citizens. The City of Olympia has such an arrangement with Fire District 9, McLane, for two small areas on the far west side and Fire District 3 on the far east side of the City.
The second addition is a clause to allow billing in a disaster situation when federal funds may be available. It was found by Snohomish County agencies after the Highway 530 (Oso) Slide, one year ago, that their mutual aid agreement prevented such cost recovery on longer deployments. New language addresses this need in a way that allows cost recovery for extended events without preventing the sharing of resources on shorter, more typical, events.
Signing this agreement restores the documents needed to memorialize the mutual aid agreement for the City of Olympia and other Thurston County agencies and fixes two small areas that needed attention.
Neighborhood/Community Interests (if known):
N/A
Options:
1. Move to approve the Interlocal Agreement for Mutual Aid for Firefighting and Emergency Medical Services and any associated documents for the Mayor's signature.
2. Do not approve the Agreement (not a viable option from a financial impact perspective).
Financial Impact:
None by signing, significant cost if not signed. Without a county-wide mutual aid agreement, additional resources for fire and emergency medical situations in Olympia would not be available or would come with potential significant cost.