FEMA Fact Sheet
 
INCIDENT MANAGEMENT ASSISTANCE TEAMS (IMAT)

•	The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 required FEMA to “establish 3 or more national emergency response teams, sufficient regional response teams and any other response teams…and ensure that target capability levels are established for Federal emergency response teams.”  

•	FEMA has developed a new generation of rapidly deployable emergency response teams called Incident Management Assistance Teams (IMATs). The IMATs are full-time, rapid-response teams with dedicated staff, able to deploy within two hours and arrive within 12 hours to support the State Territory and/or local emergency managers. 

•	The teams support the initial establishment of a Unified Coordination Group (UCG) and provide situational awareness for Federal and State decision-makers, crucial to determining the level and type of immediate Federal support that may be required.  

•	IMATs were developed from an expanded concept of the former Emergency Response Teams (ERT) at the national and regional levels. 

•	The plan is to ultimately establish three National IMATs, each with full-time dedicated staff, and 10 Regional IMATs, each having 4 full-time dedicated staff.  

•	IMATs provide a forward Federal presence to facilitate the management of the national response to catastrophic and significant incidents. 

IMAT MISSION 
•	The primary mission of an IMAT is to rapidly deploy to an incident or incident-threatened venue, provide leadership in the identification and provision of Federal assistance, and coordinate and integrate inter-jurisdictional response in support of an affected state or territory.

•	Unlike FEMA’s former ERTs which were staffed on a collateral duty basis, the IMATs are led by experienced, senior-level emergency managers and staffed with a core set of permanent full-time employees. 
•	When not deployed, the teams are responsible for building and maintaining close working relationships with regional, state, tribal, and local emergency management officials, Federal partners, and the private sector to support planning, training, exercising, and other activities in preparation for disaster response.

•	The national and regional-level teams will be augmented with additional staff from other departments and agencies as needed and are supported by FEMA’s Mobile Emergency Response Support (MERS) detachments.  

•	The teams are fully compliant with the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS) and they train and exercise as a unit.  

•	At this time, two National IMATs and four Regional IMATs are operational.  The National IMAT-East is located in Washington, D.C. at FEMA HQ and the National IMAT-West is located in Sacramento, CA.  

•	Regional IMATs have been established in FEMA Region II (New York, NY), Region IV (Atlanta, GA), Region V (Chicago, IL), and Region VI (Denton, TX).  The Region VII IMAT will be operational later this year in Kansas City, MO.

FEMA's mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.

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