A National Response Plan released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday details how the feds will team up with state and local governments during terrorist attacks and large-scale natural disasters.

Derek Jensen, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Public Safety, said the plan will help agencies with such things as using the same terminology and talking on the same radio channel during an incident.

"The [plan] helps to organize all of the federal agencies that would come in to assist us -

FEMA, the FBI. It kind of brings all of these agencies together and they respond as one unit," he said. "It also helps keep control of the incident at the local level."

Utah police and fire agencies will soon begin training and preparations to implement the National Response Plan, a prerequisite for the state's receiving homeland security funding and other federal dollars, said Salt Lake County Sheriff Aaron Kennard.

"Because of the complicated and rising threats that have been leveled at our nation and our cities, Mr. [Tom] Ridge [Homeland Security director] felt it was high time we coordinated our efforts - and I was in full agreement with him," he said.

A sheriff's captain sat on a committee charged with organizing agencies' resources and capabilities for the national plan, Kennard said.

The 140-page plan, prompted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, creates protocols for preventing terrorist acts, protecting and restoring critical infrastructure, conducting investigations and facilitating recovery efforts.

While the National Response Plan has been under way since early 2003, efforts to coordinate agencies' response were stepped up in Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics, Jensen said.

"In a lot of ways, that put us on the right path with what's happening nationally," he said. "It really forced agencies that hadn't talked with each other before to start interacting and coordinating what they were doing."

The National Response Plan can be seen at U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Web site, http://www.dhs.gov/nationalresponseplan.

lrosetta@sltrib.com.