West Paterson, Totowa, and Little Falls will soon vote on ordinances that would allow the municipalities to use each others' workers and equipment in the case of a major emergency.

Each town now has its own emergency management office, staffed by 15 representatives from police, fire departments, and other local agencies. Under the new plan, a central office would be formed in the basement of West Paterson's municipal building, said Totowa Mayor John Coiro.

The office would be called the Passaic Valley Office of Emergency Management and would not cost municipalities any extra money to organize and maintain. The office would keep a log of all resources that could be pooled in an emergency, he said.

"It will allow all three towns to know what the other two towns were doing," said Coiro, who, along with the two other mayors recently signed an agreement approving the plan.

"In case one town can't operate out of their own emergency facilities, or in case one of our emergency management officers wasn't around, the other two would provide some assistance," he said.

The idea for the plan was hatched after 9/11, when the state increased requirements for municipal emergency plans, said George Galbraith, West Paterson's public works director and emergency management coordinator. Besides knowing what they would do in the case of a flood or a fire, each municipality suddenly had to form contingency plans for a smallpox outbreak or terrorist attack.

"We started doing our own thing, and we said, 'Let's join forces; we'll come out with the same result,'" Galbraith said. "We're trying to make a boilerplate plan that will encompass bacteria, smallpox, any type of |bio-terrorism."

Merging resources will help save money, Galbraith said. Instead of needing, for instance, three sets of radio equipment or contamination suits, they would need one.

"A pressurized suit for going into contaminated areas - Totowa has it, we don't," he said. Right now, "we're reinventing the wheel three times, and you don't need to."

Little Falls Mayor Eugene Kulick said with a larger combined population to serve, the new office would qualify for larger state and federal grants.

"It gives us a little more clout," he said.

Mike Muccio, assistant fire chief in West Paterson and president of its First Aid Squad, said he thought the plan sounded like a good idea, but wondered what would happen if all the towns were hit with a disaster simultaneously.

"If everyone's got the same problem, then it's hard to share resources," he said.

Galbraith said the municipalities had been sharing resources for years. He gave the example of Tropical Storm Floyd, during which the towns shared gas pumps and cots. He said that during last summer's blackout, emergency workers were in "constant communication."

"We've actually been doing this for 20-30 years," he said. "You would pick up the phone and say, 'Hey, could you help me out?' Now we're just getting it in writing."

West Paterson is set to vote on the ordinance tonight at a Borough Council meeting. Little Falls and Totowa will vote in the coming weeks, officials said.