§ 7335. Assistance.

(a) Requests.--A participating political subdivision may request assistance of other participating political subdivisions or their designated emergency response organizations. All requests for assistance shall be initiated from the incident commander or authorized designee at an incident location, the county 911 center or the county emergency manager where the incident occurs. All intrastate mutual aid requests for assistance shall be made to the county 911 center or county emergency management coordinator or authorized designee in the responding county. Intrastate mutual aid requests for assistance may also be made through the agency. A written request shall be submitted after a verbal request is made as soon as practicable or within the number of days that the agency, in its discretion, may determine.

(b) Response to requests.--A participating political subdivision's obligation to provide assistance in the prevention of, response to and recovery from an incident or in authorized drills or exercises shall be subject to all of the following conditions:

(1) A responding political subdivision may withhold resources to the extent necessary to provide reasonable protection and services for its own jurisdiction.

(2) Emergency response personnel of a responding political subdivision shall remain under the administrative and policy procedures and control of their respective jurisdiction, including medical protocols, standard operating procedures and other protocols, but shall be under the operational control of the appropriate officials within the incident management system of the requesting political subdivision.

(3) Assets and equipment of a responding political subdivision shall remain under the administrative and policy procedures and control of their respective jurisdiction but shall be under the control of the appropriate officials within the incident management system of the requesting political subdivision.

(4) The incident commander shall have overall authority and responsibility for conducting incident operations and shall be responsible for the management of all incident operations at the incident site.

(c) Reimbursement.--A requesting political subdivision shall reimburse the responding political subdivision in accordance with procedures established by the committee. A responding political subdivision may donate assets of any kind to a participating political subdivision. If a dispute arises regarding reimbursement, involved parties shall make every effort to resolve the dispute within 30 days of written notice of the dispute by the party asserting noncompliance. In the event that the dispute is not resolved within 90 days of the notice of the claim, either party may request the dispute be resolved through arbitration. Any arbitration requested under this subsection shall be conducted under the commercial arbitration rules of the American Arbitration Association.

(d) Exceptions.--The provisions of this section shall not apply to specific mutual aid agreements which exist on the effective date of this section and which were made between political subdivisions and emergency response organizations to cover response to routine incidents.