They certainly had a good run, 30 years of providing emergency management services — across two counties. Way back when I started with the Washington State Emergency Management Division, I distinctly remember making a trip up to Snohomish County Emergency Management and ESCA to understand how they operated "together" yet separately. Washington state law allows groups of cities to set up their own emergency management organization. As I recall, the history was that southern cities in Snohomish County did not think they were getting "full service" from the county emergency management due to their focus on flooding, which is more of a central and northern county issue, so they split off.
Catching up on my history, it has all gone full circle. Snohomish County Emergency Management is a much more robust organization than it was 30 years ago and has a dedicated EOC. Back when I visited in 1992 it was in a building that was once a bank branch.
Since I'm on the outside looking in, I don't know the reasons for the change back in May 2015. It could have been budgetary or the fact that long-serving ESCA director retired a number of years ago and the relationships were not what they used to be.
One thing I'm sure of is that in any disaster declaration that involves FEMA coming to help, they won't have to start out with an explanation of this third leg of the stool called ESCA,vthat functions like a county emergency management agency but isn't.
