In its second full year of operation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security granted Massachusetts $45 million for training and equipment – almost $3 million more than last year – including $9.5 million for the Boston metropolitan area.

“A phenomenal effort took place across the nation” to prepare for future crises after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, particularly in Massachusetts and other commercial, terrorism-prone states, said Homeland Security Grants Manager Jeffrey Brownell.

With the federal funding, Brownwell said, “we’re able to better identify where the gaps are” in the current responses to statewide emergencies. The money will be used to better train and equip first-responders like police, doctors and firefighters for local and statewide emergencies.

Brownell also said the state’s ability to gather and share information and to anticipate potential threats are “in a lot better shape than two years ago,” although it is still evolving.

Last year, the first year the Department of Homeland Security allocated funds to states, Massachusetts received federal Homeland Security grants in excess of $42 million. However, at that time, municipalities within the commonwealth had to compete for funding by demonstrating their immediate need in what Brownell called “a competitive grant process.”

This year, Brownell explained, every town will receive $12,000 to aid first-responder teams and organizations.

Federal Relations Officer Jake Sullivan of the Boston Office of Intergovernmental Relations said Boston is one of 30 national “high-threat” cities in terms of terrorism.

Sullivan said much of the money from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Domestic Preparedness will be used to train people to respond to a weapon-of-mass-destruction attack on Boston.

The training will involve “breaking [a WMD crisis] down to its basic elements,” Sullivan said. “For example, when the plane crashed into the Pentagon [on Sept. 11] there was a crime scene, a fire” and other situations that police, firefighters and first-responders “deal with every day.”

“You always want to play like you practice, so that if the worst happens, you’re ready to mitigate the situation,” he said.

In Massachusetts’s official State Homeland Security Strategy, Secretary of Public Safety Edward Flynn wrote that the SHSS will “guide how the state government will work in partnership with federal, regional, local and private sector to enhance statewide capabilities to detect, prevent, respond to and manage” emergencies and threats.