2025 Mutual Aid for Building Departments Overview

This fact sheet series is designed to inform local officials and community stakeholders of building department mutual aid support following a disaster. Because most building departments do not maintain sufficient personnel levels to handle the influx of post-disaster inspections, permitting, and enforcement tasks, mutual aid agreements allow building departments to augment their personnel in times of need. Mutual aid agreements are established within and between states and territories to enable sharing of public- and private-sector personnel. For the states and territories of each FEMA region, the fact sheets will describe mutual aid agreements in effect and summarize select benefits and protections available to private-sector personnel.