City of Lubbock

Joe Moudy is an emergency management professional with experience in public safety, law enforcement, and interagency coordination. His background includes emergency management certifications, crime and intelligence analysis and public-sector leadership, supporting collaborative preparedness and effective responses to complex incidents.

Building Stronger Relationships before a Crisis

Each emergency response agency faces the common challenges of communication and coordination when responding to emergencies and disasters. It is common to see the same challenges extend to all levels of government, including relationships between government, non-profit organizations and the private sector.

These challenges become more evident in multi-agency responses, such as large fires, mass casualty incidents or emergencies that cover multiple jurisdictions.  Emergency responders are unable to communicate with each other, operate under different training and policies, duplicate efforts or do not trust other responders or agencies.

However, during the response is not the time to address these challenges. They must be addressed prior to a crisis so that we can communicate better and operate more effectively and efficiently during a crisis. The following strategies can help agencies address these challenges:

Strengthening Collaboration through Joint Training and Meetings

Explore joint-training opportunities between agencies as appropriate. This may include invitations to surrounding agencies or including other departments in training. When conducting annual training and drills, include nearby agencies. 

Law enforcement agencies can work together on room entry drills, firearms qualifications and other training. Fire agencies can work together on search and rescue drills, structure fire drills and wildland fire drills. Emergency Medical Services can work on patient loading, transportation and triage drills.

Encourage staff who attend trainings to engage and group up or sit with other agencies. We all like to keep to our own groups and those we know, but these trainings are an excellent networking opportunity.

“Some issues may be a result of perceived wrongs, and additional communication on both sides can fix the issue.”

Invite those agencies that you may rely on during large-scale incidents.  If our EMS service will rely on other ambulance transports during large-scale incidents, incorporate them into your training program. Make sure they understand what may be expected of them. This allows you to verify that those agencies are prepared, equipped and trained to meet expectations.

Conduct regular meetings with other agencies as well. Introduce new leadership personnel, update contact information and discuss challenges or successes that you have faced over the past few months. Encourage leadership to engage and meet with outside agencies. Conduct these meetings in person, as each attendee gains more from an in-person meeting as opposed to virtual meetings.

In a recent meeting of area public information officers, it was mentioned by several attendees that they were not aware of recent personnel changes and did not have updated contact information for those public information officers from other agencies. There was a comment from one agency that while they had worked with a co-worker over email and Teams, they had never met each other face-to-face until the meeting.

Building Trust through Communication and Accountability

Hold staff accountable for maintaining a positive relationship between agencies. Nothing can destroy relationships quicker than field staff continually going at each other during a typical or ‘routine’ call. Address issues brought to your attention quickly and explore both sides of the situation with the other affected agency’s leadership. Some issues may be a result of perceived wrongs, and additional communication on both sides can fix the issue. 

Encourage leadership and supervisors to look at the situation from all sides and how it will impact interagency relationships. They should then determine whether an issue stems from miscommunication, can be resolved through a brief discussion or requires escalation through official channels.

Promoting Professionalism and Positive Leadership

Address negative attitudes within supervisors and those in leadership positions. It is often said that nothing will destroy a good employee quicker than failing to address a bad employee.  Supervisors and those in leadership are expected to maintain decorum when referring to other agencies and situations.  A supervisor or a leader who constantly becomes mad or upset at the slightest provocation from another agency will quickly share that attitude with subordinates.

Negative attitude about another agency can result in supervisors not responding to miscommunications or perceived wrongs appropriately.

Standardizing Communication and Building Interagency Trust

Test communication methods. Make sure that radio channels can be used by all agencies and develop policies and procedures on when to use mutual channels and what communications are appropriate for those channels. Establish a history and muscle memory of using these channels when multi-agency responses occur on routine calls.

At the same time, implement policies and procedures to encourage the use of plain language across all agencies. Nothing destroys communications quicker than using codes and abbreviations that others are not aware of. Each agency has their version of codes and abbreviations. When communicating during multi-agency responses, it is critical that the use of those codes and abbreviations be eliminated.

While it is easy to place this responsibility on leadership and supervisory positions, each member of your organization has a responsibility to continue to enhance and improve those interagency relationships and collaboration. Staff need to be able to trust in the capabilities of the surrounding agencies and responders that will be working with them side-by-side.