The Mt. Lebanon Fire Department can grab its gear, don equipment, start the firetruck and scurry across town to answer an emergency in mere minutes. So it wasn't a stretch for two department veterans to leave town to help Hurricane Katrina evacuees with less than 24 hours' notice. They have barely stopped moving since.

At 5 p.m. Sept. 1, Platoon Chief Chris Buttlar and Lt. Loren Hughes applied to be two of 2,000 firefighters from across the country to serve minimum 30-day deployments to Texas for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

A whirlwind followed. At 8 a.m. the next morning, they learned by fax they were accepted and flew to Atlanta that day to begin training. By Labor Day, they were in Reliant Park in Houston, working in community relations and helping to process more than 30,000 evacuees, many of them from Louisiana.

Now the pair is hoping they don't become evacuees themselves as Hurricane Rita heads toward Texas.

Buttlar, 38, and Hughes, 35, both paid firefighters and Mt. Lebanon residents, have been working long days fueled with adrenaline and the camaraderie of other firefighters to get as many evacuees as possible registered in the FEMA system. Buttlar has been working at the command post at Reliant Park, home of four of Houston's public venues, including Reliant Arena, Reliant Astrodome and Reliant Center. Reliant Field does not have a shelter. Hughes has been on the road, working a type of reconnaissance mission, looking for evacuees scattered throughout town and helping to answer their questions.

"We're very proud of both of them," Mt. Lebanon fire Chief Steve Darcangelo said. "They both have tremendous personalities. Easygoing. Friendly. That sounds like what anybody would say about anybody, but these guys take it to a new level."

Reached at his post several times by cell phone, Buttlar was on a high last week after helping to reunite a mother and her 5-year-old son with her other son, 14, who became lost during the evacuation of New Orleans. Buttlar did a search of Houston high schools and found him enrolled at nearby Jones High School.

"That was a great story," Buttlar said, his pleasure apparent in his voice. "You're looking for a needle in a haystack."

He also was hoping to line up reimbursement for a family who paid $8,000 they could ill afford to airlift a relative with late-stage amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, from Atlanta, where he was taken, to Houston.

Buttlar has been working 14- to 16-hour days as a liaison between FEMA and the incident command center at Reliant Center, helping coordinate the FEMA response in Houston and supervising crews of nine to 80 people working in community relations. His team assisted with the distribution of 5,000 debit cards and required complicated logistics to handle long lines of those waiting hours for help.

"The stuff that I'm doing is mentally taxing," he said, noting that he sometimes worries he might not get it all done. To recharge each night, he spends a few hours before he heads back to the hotel meeting evacuees and listening to their stories.

"There hasn't been a lot of decompression," he said. "The job needs to be done. It's a short period. You just kind of suck it up and go."

He has been so busy that he hasn't had time to do laundry, so he stops frequently at Wal-Mart and buys new underwear. He wonders if he'll have enough luggage to get it home.

Buttlar, who said he "breathes the Steelers," did not even realize the team was scheduled to play Houston on Sunday at Reliant Stadium, just a few hundred yards from where he had been working. He and other workers, however, did get to the game for a bit of relaxation.

The entertainment complex, which Buttlar called "Reliant City," was stocked to help the thousands of evacuees.

It included food and water, a fully operational Red Cross hospital, a bank, a children's inflatable playground and even a saxophonist in the lobby. Social Security Administration representatives were there to assist with identification verification.

Counselors from Alcoholics Anonymous and drug rehabilitation were on hand to help. Children and youth services were available. Evacuees even could have instant checking accounts set up into which FEMA funds were directly deposited.

Job scouts from Tyson Chicken were putting up fliers in hopes of attracting workers to their plants, and other employers were looking for people willing to relocate to other states for jobs.

"You ask for it and they have it here," he said.

And, despite the tussles shown on television, Buttlar said, the mood was calm and the evacuees reasonable.

"They are the most patient group of people I have ever seen and they have lost everything," Buttlar said. "They will be in line. They will wait for hours if you ask them."

Tuesday, the Reliant Park command center closed and all evacuees were moved from Reliant Park to Arkansas because of the projected path of Hurricane Rita. Buttlar and Hughes spent yesterday preparing for the oncoming storm, after which they could have a new group of evacuees to assist. .

The FEMA workers, including Hughes and Buttlar, have had hotel and motel accommodations, even though they brought sleeping bags and were prepared to camp, if necessary. Because of the crowded conditions, however, they have had to change hotels every few nights and learn new routes into the city.

Hughes has spent much time in the Houston outskirts, scouring the area for evacuees. Hughes' goal is to get them to register with FEMA, which gets them a nine-digit ID number and access to assistance if they qualify, something other FEMA officials handle.

For example, about 30,000 Vietnamese Buddhists from Louisiana were evacuated to Texas. Buttlar helped develop an action plan to find more than 10,000 of them believed to be in town by visiting local temples. In two hours, the teams found 1,000 of them. They found pro-bono lawyers and Vietnamese translators to help get them registered.

Hughes, also reached by cell phone, said he spends most of his time these days answering questions or providing phone numbers for help.

"These are people who have worked all their lives and now they have nothing," he said, noting that, sometimes, the evacuees just want to talk.

"It's going to take a lot of time for people to get the help they need," Hughes said as he identified the hardest thing about this job.

Back home, Buttlar's wife, Marcy, has been "incredibly supportive," while working and taking care of their three children, age 13, 10 and 5.

In 13 years of marriage, they hadn't been separated for more than a week. But Marcy Buttlar told her husband that, if she could help the effort by staying home, juggling work and taking care of the kids by herself, then she would.

"I totally needed that," Chris Buttlar said.

Hughes is single and has family and firefighters looking after his home.

Darcangelo said FEMA was supposed to reimburse the department for the pair's salary.

Both Buttlar and Hughes say they're excited about the emergency management information they'll be bringing home when they're done Oct. 3.

And Hughes has gained a new appreciation for his life.

"I can leave here anytime I want and head back to Pittsburgh," Hughes said. "And I have everything I need."

The Mt. Lebanon Fire Department is documenting some of the pair's stories on a blog at: mtlfdresponds.blogspot.com/.

A collection in Castle Shannon for Katrina's victims. Page S-7

More fund-raisers to help those affected by the hurricane. Page S-7