On Tuesday, August 9, Governor O’Malley signed an executive order to formalize joint training practices and mutual aid across the seven bomb squad units located in Maryland. The units are from Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, Baltimore County, Baltimore City, Annapolis, Ocean City and the State Fire Marshal’s Office.  As reported by MarylandReporter.com:

The executive order formalizes agreements between the seven units to provide efficient statewide bomb squad response and provides for joint training exercises between different jurisdictions and departments, such as SWAT teams.

The bomb squad units have been working on cooperative practices and have worked together to standardize equipment.

The cooperative practices have already made it easier for different bomb squads to work together, said Capt. Dale Ednock of the Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Bomb Squad.

“One of the [prior] issues … was that each of the bomb squads had different equipment … it was hard to bring another tech in to operate your stuff. Now we’re trying to standardize all that,” Ednock said. “I can get another tech from another squad to come operate my equipment. He already knows how to do it.”