Due to differences in governance structure, training, applicable polices, legal requirements and culture, the nature of operations vary based on agency, county, population, leadership, etc. This leads to serious challenges during multi-agency response to emergencies. The different agencies are required to work together to effectively and efficiently respond to an emergency incident. The paper contributes to research in areas of inter-agency collaboration and emergency management. With the help of case study, this paper aims to explore factors that impact inter-agency collaboration to generate design principles that are useful to designing better systems to mitigate critical incidents. In addition, with the help of interviews with four experts (two fire chiefs and two dispatchers) and raw incident communication reports, we identify system, communication, information, and interoperability issues