Inter-agency collaboration for fire disaster management in Nairobi City

The County Government of Nairobi faces a myriad of capacity challenges that have impeded fire disaster management in the City. This is further compounded by the lack of a comprehensive legal and institutional framework for disaster management in Kenya. Whereas the County Government enlists assistance from other public, private and civil society organizations, the approach employed is skewed towards interagency coordination rather than a collaborative approach. This paper looks at the concept of collaboration and its overall application in disaster management. It gives an overview of the Kenyan situation in relation to fire disaster management in Nairobi. The paper indicates that the County Government the County government has no framework for inter-agency collaboration thus fire disaster operations involve coordination of the different agencies by either the County government or the National Disaster Operations Centre. This means that the interaction between the agencies involved is one in which formal linkages are mobilized because some assistance is required for fire disaster response rather than a joint decision making approach where power is shared and all agencies take collective responsibility. The paper concludes that given the County government's inadequate capacity for fire disaster management, there is need to embrace inter-agency collaboration to enhance fire disaster management in the city. It thus recommends the formulation and adoption of a fire disaster management policy; formulation and implementation of fire disaster management legislation; fostering partnerships with the private sector through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs); and the development of an interagency fire management program/plan, as suggestions to augment inter-agency collaboration for fire disaster management.