Natural and manmade disasters do not respect political boundaries or the degree of preparedness of states and localities to respond to and recover from them. Building officials together with fire and emergency management personnel are on the front-line in planning, mitigating, responding to and recovering from such events.

A number of building departments across the nation have developed programs and materials, including mutual aid agreements, disaster manuals and checklists, that have proved invaluable in their response to and recovery from a wide-range of disasters. To aid other building departments and their communities, NCSBCS and the Association of Major City & County Building Officials, with funding from the Institute of Building Technology and Safety, have initiated a project to gather such materials and to publish a report sharing a summary and sample of those materials.

The following materials are being sought:

• Cooperative Agreements
• Disaster Manuals (or Table of Contents)
• Disaster Checklists
• Other materials to support a building department’s role in disaster planning, mitigation, response and recovery

In addition to the report, from this effort NCSBCS plans to connect those building departments that would like to develop or adopt such materials with those who are willing and able to share them. In addition, through the sharing of these materials jurisdictions may be able to gain ideas from others as to ways in which to improve their existing mutual aid agreements, disaster manuals, checklists and other support documents.

An electronic version of the final report will be sent to all of those responding to this request.