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Multidisciplinary Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs) were developed in the 1980s as part of the National Disaster Medical System to augment local medical care after a federally declared disaster. Researchers reviewed data for all 42 DMATs in the U.S. from 1985 to 2002 to determine the frequency and types of deployments.
DMATs were deployed to 58 disasters, including 8 outside the U.S. The disasters were 19 hurricanes or tropical storms, 10 floods, 11 earthquakes, 6 fires, 3 terrorist attacks, 2 blizzards or ice storms, 2 epidemics, 2 plane crashes, 2 relief missions, and 1 tornado. Water-related disasters (hurricanes and floods) accounted for half the deployments. The average number of total annual deployments ranged from zero to eigh…