FIRE COMMISSIONER SCOPPETTA ANNOUNCES DEPLOYMENT OF FDNY RESOURCES TO GULF COAST IN ADVANCE OF HURRICANE GUSTAV

40-Member Incident Management Team Responding Tonight/Tomorrow

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta announced today that - at the request of officials in Louisiana - the FDNY is sending a 40-person specially-trained Incident Management Team (IMT) to assist in handling the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav. The IMT, trained by the federal government, will be assigned to coordinate all firefighting operations in the state of Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Gustav.

Five IMT members are flying out of NYC tonight by and will be followed tomorrow by the team's 35 remaining members.

(This group is in addition to yesterdays deployment of 35 members of New York Task Force 1 - the highly-trained FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force comprised of members of the FDNY, NYPD and OEM that are enroute to the Gulf Coast.)

Additionally, the state of Louisiana has requested the possible response of an additional 200 New York City firefighters to back fill local fire and emergency services overwhelmed by the effects of Hurricane Gustav. (We will know sometime tomorrow if this request is necessary.)

In 2005, the FDNY sent more than 600 firefighters to New Orleans during a six-week deployment following Hurricane Katrina. The Department's Incident Management Team was also deployed to oversee and manage fire and emergency response operations in the city of New Orleans.

Press Contact: Francis X. Gribbon & James Long, (FDNY) (718) 999-2056

http://www.nyc.gov/fdny