With tears is how firefighters from St. Tammany were thanked when they arrived in Gustav-ravished south Louisiana recently.

Specifically, Fire Protection Districts 4 and 1 from Mandeville and Slidell sent 25 personnel on two strike teams to help with relief efforts in Terrebonne, Lafourche and other nearby parishes.

The strike teams were sent as part of the newly established in-state first response program prompted after Katrina.

Fire Protection District 4 firefighters Vince Trabona, Sam Rehage, Chris Lunn and Neil Comeaux install a blue tarp on the Labadieville Middle School'€™s roof in Assumption Parish after Gustav left it damaged.

Parish and state officials set up the program to provide more rapid relief to neighboring parishes during times of emergencies, FD4 Chief Rick Tassin said.

After Gustav left coastal communities like Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes limping without power and other basic-needs services, including EMS, the fire marshal put out a request to fire departments in southeast Louisiana calling for available personnel.

Dealing with their own cleanup efforts, FD4 and FD1 were the first to respond. The first strike unit was assembled consisting of two ambulances, two sprint vehicles, a first response unit and 11 firefighters/paramedics.

Soon after the first deployment, another strike unit was gathered with 14 more members from FD4 and FD1 dispatched to help with cleanup efforts and medical emergencies.

“We provided them with something they never had before,” FD4 Director of Emergency Medical Services Frank Jordan said.

When the troops weren’t responding to emergency medical calls or providing fire protection, they were covering roofs with blue tarps, clearing roads of downed trees, assisting the elderly with cleanup work and much more, Jordan said.

Smiling, Jordan told of one example where they helped an 87-year-old man remove trees from his house after a concerned neighbor, after seeing the man struggle, called authorities.

“After we cleared his yard, we went to her house and cleared her yard, too,” Jordan said. “The tears streamed from their eyes when they thanked us.”

In addition to the relief work, Jordan said FD4 and FD1 provided a level of service the smaller, volunteer departments weren’t accustomed to seeing.

“St. Tammany was well represented down there,” Jordan said, adding he’s already received a call from one of the mayors thanking them again. “They really didn’t want us to go home.”

The 25 ultimately provided aid to several cities and towns in Lafourche, Terrebonne and other parishes before returning home last week, Jordan said, adding the residents threw a seafood boil as a going-away party.

Jordan said the aid they provided to south Louisiana would have not been possible without nearby town Abita Springs’ Fire District 8 supplying backup vehicles.