Emergency medical workers from Auburn are heading south this weekend to help wherever they might be needed as Hurricane Gustav tracks toward the Gulf Coast of the United States.

A total of six people from TLC Emergency Medical Services, three from Auburn and three from Cortland, are staffing three ambulances that will be standing by in case they're needed.

TLC operations director Lon Fricano said that the ambulance crews were dispatched as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster response plan and had made it as far as Knoxville, Tenn., Friday afternoon.

From a staging point for similar crews from across the country, the workers will likely be dispatched to help with evacuations of hospitals and nursing homes or help with other emergencies, Fricano said, and they could be kept busy for the next two weeks. In the event that a devastating storm fails to materialize, some crews will simply be told to go back home.

Fricano said that when a disaster strikes, that state and local emergency services can quickly become overwhelmed, a point illustrated well by the inadequate response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

This weather event, Fricano said, is especially troubling because a second storm is gaining strength behind Gustav, opening the potential for parts of the southeastern United States to get hit by back-to-back storms.

“Hopefully, these storms won't hit with the intensity they're predicting,” Fricano said, “but this looks like a pretty significant weather event.

Fricano said that TLC, the primary emergency services provider for the city of Auburn and Cortland County, will be a little short-staffed during this emergency but that the company has enough people to cover its territory. “We will incur some overtime,” Fricano said, adding that the federal government will provide reimbursement for TLC's expenses.