One of the greatest challenges for 9-1-1 centers during a disaster is maintaining adequate staffing levels. To address this problem and expand on some individual state initiatives in place, APCO International and NENA have joined hands to develop more widely the Telecommunicator Emergency Response Taskforce (TERT).

TERT involves a comprehensive program that includes assistance to individual states in developing programs that would lead to the establishment of predetermined and selected trained teams of individuals who can be mobilized quickly and deployed to assist communications centers during disasters.

TERT Member is a Public Safety Call taker and/or Dispatcher who has been trained to deploy to disaster areas to assist and relieve affected PSAPs

FEMA courses required:

IS-100 Introduction to the Incident Command System (ICS 100)

IS-144 Telecommunicators Emergency Response Taskforce (TERT) Basic Course

IS-200 ICS for Single Resource and Initial Action Incidents

IS-700 National Incident Management System (NIMS) An Introduction.

IS-800 National Response Framework, an Introduction