Hurricane Ike trash the coast of Texas, and response teams have come from all over to help. But Ike raises concerns about the care response teams receive during a major disaster.

Joel Domangue, works with the Louisiana State Fire Marshal’s emergency operations center. His office took responsibility for finding water, food and beds for the incoming response teams.

“The Red Cross takes care of the citizens, FEMA takes care of the citizens, but who takes care of the first responders?” Domangue asked. Domangue was with Ferrara Fire Apparatus when it set up its facility as a base of operations to help provide meals, beds and dry clothing for the firefighters and others responding to Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

“Three years later and nobody gives a crap about the first responders,” said Domangue. “The FEMA Director David Paulison has done a hell of a job, but he needs to know what’s going on. Here’s another storm and we’re going through it again. We can’t get MREs and water for these guys. Louisiana State Fire Marshal H. Butch Browning has taken the lead role to help our people [first responders] through a third major storm in this area.”

But not everyone is having as much difficulty.

According to Illinois Mutual Aid Box Alarm System President Jay Reardon, MABAS teams, and other state teams, respond with enough provisions to be self-sustaining for 72 hours, after which food, water and shelter would be provided locally. A FEMA base camp had been established, but subsequently used for local residents; response teams were moved to a nearby church. The MABAS teams arrived Thursday and were relocated from southeast Louisiana to McComb, Miss., then sent to the southwest portion of Louisiana to await orders.

Monday morning, Reardon said that there were frustrations with some of the logistics, but it was due to waiting for an assessment of the damage as the hurricane winds subsided. “To my knowledge, their needs for nourishment were there and some plans didn’t happen because we were getting everybody demobilized,” he said.

Reardon also said that five fire stations in southwest Louisiana are uninhabitable due to structural damage and the flooding from Hurricane Ike. “We’re trying to help their personnel get some rest.” There were some shortfalls, he said, "but this was a tremendous difference, because we learned lots of lessons from Katrina.”

By Monday morning, the situation in Louisiana had stabilized, Reardon said. One team had returned to Illinois and two more would be heading back Monday. About 30 people or two teams with 10 rigs remain.

“Overall, it worked pretty darn well. Next time we’ll do it a little different," Reardon said. "We’re going to talk about this after it’s all over.”