The Champaign Fire Department sent a total of 12 fire personnel and six pieces of equipment to aid in the Hurricane Katrina recovery, Dena Schumacher, public information officer for the fire department, said.

Schumacher said the city sent four firefighters Saturday and two more on Monday with a Federal Emergency Management Agency contingency. She said the agency most likely deployed them to Dallas to help with organizing shelters and providing basic assistance for the people being evacuated out of the disaster areas.

The other six went to New Orleans on Saturday as part of a group of 16 firefighters from the nearby towns of Mahomet, Savoy and St. Joe in addition to the Champaign personnel. They brought a fire truck and five vans with them, Schumacher said.

“The second group got sent by a state-wide system that provides emergency response, generally in Illinois,” Schumacher said. “But they were activated for New Orleans.”

While FEMA is under the Department of Homeland Security, the second contingency was sent by the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, an Illinois state program that predates the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This system originally was set up as a way for neighboring fire departments to aid each other in crisis times. It was expanded to include the whole state and some neighboring states, Schumacher said.

In this case, the state requested the system to deploy personnel to New Orleans, said Jerry Page, the executive liaison for the system.

“When we’re requested, we become a state asset,” Page said. “We can be deployed to other states.”

Page went on to say the state sent approximately 600 firefighters, about 1.5 percent of the state’s fire personnel. He said the system sent close to the same amount of people from each of the state’s 57 fire divisions, but some divisions cover more area than others.

The firefighters from Champaign who were deployed to Dallas are scheduled to be there for 30 days, and the other set of firefighters from Champaign are to be in New Orleans for 14 days.

The firefighters from Champaign who were sent as a part of FEMA were just a fraction of the 1,000 teams from across the United States that the agency sent, Schumacher said.

Illinois sent more than 1,600 national guardsmen, medical personnel, firefighters and other state employees to aid in the recovery since Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 30, said Patti Thompson, spokesperson for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.

“There is a real mix of citizens who were called into action because of their expertise,” Thompson said.

She also said it is possible the state will have to send more people to help the recovery.

“I could see (sending more people) as a definite possibility because this is going to be a long term recovery process,” Thompson said.

The Champaign County Emergency Management Agency is trying to help the residents of Katrina-affected areas who have relocated to Champaign. The Red Cross, the United Way and the agency are opening an information and resource center on the fourth floor of the Illinois Terminal in order to provide the relocated people with assistance. The center will be open tomorrow from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and will remain open every day until the need subsides, Schumacher said.

“The next leg for us is these people being taken from shelters across the U.S.,” Schumacher said. “People can begin to get information and resources.”