Disaster Response Team

The DaRT team was created in 2000 with the intent of establishing a team to allow for a more efficient and effective response to a large incident. It was inspired by the Oklahoma City bombing where enormous difficulties were faced due to the scope of the incident and the vast number of emergency responders from numerous agencies and disciplines.

In its essence, the DaRT team is an incident management team. Its mission is to assist police personnel in establishing a command structure during large incidents. This includes facilitating the management of operations, planning, logistics, and finance. DaRT personnel are extensively trained in multiple levels of the Incident Command System and the National Incident Management System. The team cross trains with other emergency response agencies in order to develop a more coordinated response by all agencies likely to be involved.

While the teams main focus is preparing for large incidents, it has been utilized in the search for missing persons (those with Alzheimers or a mental deficiency), assisting with Katrina evacuees at Camp Gruber, and the Mid-town Microburst (storm).

The DaRT team is on call 24-hours a day, 365 days a year and stands ready to rapidly respond to any disaster situation that the City faces.