In the aftermath of man-made and natural disasters that devastated many areas of our country, public safety communications centers have faced tremendous challenges. One of the greatest challenges was maintaining adequate staffing levels of the communications centers. 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.