# Emergency Management Assistance Compact The **Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC)** is the interstate mutual-aid compact through which one state sends personnel and equipment to another during a disaster. Congress ratified it in 1996 as **Pub. L. 104-321**. All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands have enacted the compact. Its trigger is narrow and matters: **EMAC assistance is available only during a governor-declared state of emergency or disaster.** There is no other key, and no federal declaration substitutes for it. What the compact does once triggered is the part that is routinely underestimated. Responders deployed under EMAC serve as agents of the **requesting** state; their professional licenses, credentials and certifications are honored across the state line; tort liability and workers' compensation coverage transfer with them; and the reimbursement obligation between the two states is legally binding rather than a matter of goodwill. Absent the compact, an out-of-state nurse, lineman or [[National Guard]] unit arriving to help would be practicing without a license and working without coverage. The structural consequence is that a governor's emergency declaration is an **interstate instrument, not merely a domestic one** — and that letting the declaration lapse switches off every other state's ability to send help on recognized credentials. See [[State Emergency Powers Crosswalk]], Lane 6. ## See also - [[State Emergency Powers Crosswalk]] · [[Emergency Powers Crosswalk]] · [[Stafford Act]] · [[Federalism]] · [[National Guard]]