NEW ORLEANS— Today, the City of New Orleans announced that members of the New Orleans Fire Department (NOFD) and New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (NOHSEP) who were deployed to Puerto Rico on Thursday, Nov. 30 have been reassigned to support Puerto Rican emergency personnel in the transition from emergency response to emergency recovery efforts following Hurricane Maria.
A total of 11 first responders as part of the NOFD Incident Management Team (IMT) have been providing incident management support to emergency personnel in some of the hardest hit areas of Puerto Rico.
After one week on the ground, New Orleans’ team’s knowledge, skills and expertise in disaster mitigation and recovery was acknowledged by both FEMA and Puerto Rico’s Emergency Management Agency, and they were selected on Friday, Dec. 8 to begin assisting Puerto Rican emergency personnel to develop more long-term plans for recovery and make sure they have proper staffing and support as other first responders that have been assisting since the disaster are phased out of Puerto Rico.
Last week, the New Orleans IMT assisted emergency personnel in surveying the area, documenting damage and requesting necessary resources for recovery.
NOFD and NOHSEP will continue to work out of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency (PREMA) Joint Field Office until they return to New Orleans on Friday, Dec. 15.
Previously, NOFD and NOHSEP deployed personnel to assist with the response to Hurricane Harvey in Port Arthur, Texas and Hurricane Irma in Monroe County, Florida. These types of deployments are requested through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC). EMAC is a nationally-adopted mutual aid agreement through which states can request assistance from or provide assistance to other states during a disaster.
