RALEIGH — Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and North Carolina Emergency Management announced that North Carolina will be the first State to be assigned a FEMA Integration Team.

During a Press Conference, Tuesday, at the Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh, FEMA Administrator Brock Long said there are three goals to embedding federal assets in state agencies, "to build a true culture of preparedness, to ensure that emergency management officials are readying the nation for catastrophic disasters, and to reduce the complexity of FEMA and recovery programs that come down from the federal government, ultimately, to the states."

The announcement on Tuesday was scheduled before Sunday's tornadoes in Guilford and Wake Counties. North Carolina Emergency Management Director Mike Sprayberry said while the new FEMA Team is qualified to assist with recovery in Greensboro, the Team is scheduled to travel to Atlanta for two weeks of training before it is officially embedded and put to work in North Carolina.

The 2017 disaster season was historic for federal disaster response and recovery. With 137 presidentially-declared disasters in 2017 alone, three major land-fall hurricanes and two wildfires warranted a full federal response only within a few months.

For the remainder of fiscal year 2018, FEMA will embed FEMA staff in up to 10 states. Phase 2 will begin in fiscal year 2019 and assignment of teams will expand to include up to 34 partners across all 10 regions. Phase 3 will begin in fiscal year 2020 and reach full operating capability with FITs embedded in SLTT partner offices across all 10 regions throughout the Nation.