How do you figure out the financial side? What if somebody wrecks a truck on the way?

That's covered in the contract under indemnification. If my people go to another town and get hurt or disabled, I am responsible for those costs as if it were to happen here. Whether it's damage to equipment, damage to the fire truck, to the individual, it's a risk of doing business that we all accept. We also accept the fact that none of us have the ability, even the city of Chicago, that we'll never need help from anybody. Everybody will need help from somebody sooner or later.

How do we effectively make it happen so it doesn't become a big brouhaha politically when equipment is broke and people hurt? So it's sufficiently compliant to statutes? I think … the people who created it in 1968 thought of those issues and put together a system based on those premises.

The minute you introduce dollars, you introduce politics. What do politics have to do with putting out a fire? When that building is burning or that hazmat spill is spilling or people are on balconies of an apartment building, politics don't mean a whole lot them. What you need is a system that's going to give you resources to deal with the situation.

When you start charging for mutual aid, the pressure is on the field operators not to call mutual aid because of the cost, and at what point will they have waited too long before they realize they have no other option? Will it be of value or will the loss already have occurred? Will it be measured in property or lives? We can't do that to our field operators, so if I pull an extra alarm, what's that going to cost me? What's a life worth? If it's priceless, why do we want to put a price on charging for it?

MABAS was quickly reimbursed for its costs to Katrina.

That's correct. The reason is that we, MABAS, have signed a memo of agreement with Illinois Emergency Management Agency. Under the IEMA statute, they can sign agreements with entities, public and private, that upon a declaration of disaster, they are willing to assist and become a state resource. When that happens, under the state law, all expenses, liability and immunities are extended to those resources. Technically speaking, even though Northbrook sent a truck down to Katrina, you could have put “State of Illinois” on the side of it because it was a state of Illinois asset. They paid for that asset.

Louisiana asked for that assistance through … state-to-state mutual aid, so Louisiana is actually paying the bill and then Louisiana seeks payment from FEMA.

Conversely, I got a phone call from IEMA. It was a fire in a small city where half of the downtown was burning. The chief was screaming for help, but [the department was] not a MABAS entity. It didn't warrant a disaster, IEMA said. My hands were tied — there was nothing I could do to provide help to that town. If I sent my teams in, I'd be completely on my own because I have no authority to send resources to that community because I have no agreement.

Several departments opted to go out there on their own. It was not an official activation because if somebody gets hurt, there are no protections to fix a vehicle or injured firefighters. You have exceeded your legal authorities. Some departments went and nobody got hurt. A week later, the chief called me, and I sent him the MABAS material and he said they were going to join, but I never heard from him and they are not part of MABAS.