On June 23, 2015, an EF3 tornado producing 166 mph winds tore through the Village of Coal City, Ill., a growing community of 5,500 about an hour’s drive south of Chicago. The funnel created a 16-mile path of destruction within minutes, cutting power and blocking major thoroughfares with uprooted trees. Municipal buildings sustained extensive structural damage.
As soon as the storm passed, village officials were on the phone with state and federal emergency management officials. Realizing his eight employees needed help clearing debris before their arrival, Public Works Superintendent Darrell Olson also called a not-for-profit corporation the village had recently joined: the Illinois Public Works Mutual Aid Network (IPWMAN). Launched in 2009 by City of Urbana, Stephenson County, and Village of Wauconda public works professionals, IPWMAN provides five days of free equipment and labor to cities overwhelmed by natural or manmade disaster. Since then, 250 members have provided at least $1.5 million in aid value to roughly 25 communities in 28 disasters.
More than 40 members answered Coal City’s call, with help arriving within two hours. “We had streets passable within a week,” says IPWMAN Immediate Past President Don Wenzel, who’s facilities superintendent for the City of Rolling Meadows, Ill., in suburban Chicago. “The recovery process can take years. By accomplishing so much in the first week, we take some load off that community and help get a sliver of normalcy back.” Coal City’s village manager estimates the community received $500,000 in assistance from IPWMAN.
“The county, state, and federal government are going to help, but you waste time waiting for the emergency declaration necessary to get assets from these bigger entities,” Wenzel says. “IPWMAN provides assistance immediately.”
No Need to Reinvent the Wheel
Police and fire have long-established mutual aid protocol. Fire department agreements with neighboring communities morphed into the mutual aid box alarm system (MABAS). Police departments also routinely help each other out, but devising similar support networks for overwhelmed public works employees is trickier.
As City of Jordan, Utah, Public Services Manager Tim Peters notes in the January 2017 issue of the American Public Works Association’s magazine, public works doesn’t need help as often as other public safety services. It could be years, if ever, before a municipality that got help can return the favor. The inability to resolve how to compensate responding communities for equipment, labor, and materials and manage liability has hampered efforts.
Nonetheless, Illinois isn’t the only state that’s devised a workable solution.
Public water and sewer utilities were underprepared for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, so the American Water Works Association (AWWA) established the water/wastewater agency response network (WARN) program, which requires members to comply with the 10-step action plan established by National Incident Management System (NIMS). By 2009, all 50 states had signed an aid agreement or formed a committee to create a network.
Illinois used AWWA’s 13-page model agreement as the basis for its membership document in 2009. The North Central Texas Council of Governments used the language to launch the Public Works Emergency Response Team (PWERT) in 2012. Utah public works professionals used (with permission from the state’s 85 water and sewer utilities) to develop the Emergency Management Alliance in 2014.
None obligate members to answer a call for help, but they do require the agreement be reviewed and approved by a city attorney or governing body. In Utah, personnel and equipment are managed by the responding agency, which keeps a daily log of resources provided, in cooperation with a response plan devised by the requesting agency. The requesting agency pays responding agencies for labor (including but not limited to pensions and benefits) and equipment (at Federal Emergency Management Agency rates). Depending on the extent of the damage, Utah network leaders can waive the fees.
Membership in Utah’s alliance is free, but IPWMAN members pay $100 to $500 annually based on municipality size. This nominal fee goes toward one paid employee, an administrative assistant. Everything else pertaining to response is done by volunteers who work with their current employer to coordinate their two jobs.
Once they receive a distress call from an emergency dispatch service known as the “blue line,” IPWMAN’s board of directors calls member communities closest to the damage and e-mails all members with a request for equipment and/or labor. As in Utah, member agencies are under no obligation to respond. The board establishes a command, often led by IPWMAN’s president, who works with the affected city’s public works department to deploy assistance. After five days of free assistance, the requesting agency may opt to continue receiving aid on their own dime.
Using volunteer labor and equipment and money from membership fees has allowed the network to operate without state funding.
Local Involvement Improves State Response
These networks aren’t intended to replace state or federal emergency aid. In fact, they often improve the ability of other first responders to formulate and deploy response efforts. IPWMAN, for example, immediately contacts the state to collaborate on developing an efficient game plan.
“Funny enough, our first activation was a state activation,” Wenzel says. “We went to southern Illinois to help a tiny town that had been hit by a tornado. Cartersville didn’t have a public works department and wasn’t a member, but we went anyway because the state mandated it.”
“It comes down to assisting responding state and federal agencies that need our help the most,” says IPWMAN Secretary and Wauponsee Township Highway Commissioner Mark Doerfler. “We work together to solve the problem through the incident command structure (ICS) [a standardized on-scene protocol designed to help first responders deploy resources efficiently].”
Extra training isn’t required, as members should already have undergone emergency preparedness in their own departments. However, both Illinois and Utah conduct regular training exercises to ensure all bases will be covered when disaster strikes. There may be contingencies or intrajurisdictional administrative questions no one considered before a particular incident.
In August 2018, Utah County requested two bulldozers to fight a large fire in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache and Manti-La Sal national forests. Salt Lake County provided one and Wasatch County provided the other. “We sent ours under our public works mutual aid alliance agreement, but actual compensation may fall under a different agreement since the National Park Service will be paying all costs,” says Salt Lake County Public Works Operations Associate Director Michael Leon Berrett, PE.
In August 2018, Utah County requested two bulldozers to fight a large fire in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache and Manti-La Sal national forests. Salt Lake County provided one and Wasatch County provided the other. “We sent ours under our public works mutual aid alliance agreement, but actual compensation may fall under a different agreement since the National Park Service will be paying all costs,” says Salt Lake County Public Works Operations Associate Director Michael Leon Berrett, PE.
Wenzel, who has worked for 34 years in emergency management, heard about IPWMAN in 2009. He immediately got involved and pushed his city council to join.
“Public works departments saw huge budget decreases after the 2008 recession,” he says. “Unlike police and fire that staff 24-hour shifts, we’re staffed for eight hours. When stuff happens, we can’t do it alone. I saw my community could benefit from this and so did my city council. It was an easy sell.”
