Members of the Cumberland County Board of Supervisors voted to enter a mutual aid agreement with the Town of Farmville for fire and emergency services during its meeting Tuesday.

The agreement, according to documentation from the meeting board packet, can occur “once the requesting jurisdiction has depleted its resources or is in imminent danger of depleting its resources, as the result of incident demands and needs additional resources to mitigate the incident, and/ or resources to respond to additional calls-for-service in its jurisdiction while it is engaged in other emergency response activities, or … in the event that specialized personnel, equipment or expertise needed to respond to an emergency is not available in the requesting jurisdiction.”

An emergency, defined by the agreement, is the necessity for Advanced Life Support assistance, where the other entity would supply personnel or equipment; normal terrain search for persons who are presumed lost and not capable of taking care of themselves, such as small children, those with cognitive disabilities and the elderly; natural or man-made disasters, such as floods, tornadoes, fire, hazardous materials incidents, rescue/EMS incidents, or severe storms and other incidents that would require assistance from specialists or specialized teams.

Officials authorized in the Town of Farmville to request and supply Mutual Aid assistance to the participating jurisdictions include the town manager, mayor, police chief, fire chief and public works director.

Gerald Spates serves as the Farmville town manager, David Whitus the town mayor, A.Q. “Andy” Ellington serves as the Farmville Police Department chief, Dean Farmer serves as the Farmville Fire Department chief and Robin Atkins serves as the Farmville Public Works director.

All requests for assistance should be routed through the town manager, emergency manager or Farmville 911 Communications Center.

The Statewide Mutual Aid Program, according to the meeting board packet, “was developed to assist localities to more effectively and efficiently exchange services and resources, especially in response to a major disaster or state-or-locally declared state of emergency; and which program is intended to be supplement to day-to-day mutual aid agreement between adjacent or nearby localities.”

Cumberland County has experienced challenges in its Fire & Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in the past year. Tom Perry resigned his post as chief of Cumberland County Fire & EMS in June.

Fire and rescue agencies personnel and residents have voiced ongoing concerns about the operations of the fire and rescue departments in the county, difficulties in communication between different agencies, difficulties in maintaining equipment and a dwindling volunteer pool.