The Local Assistance State Team (LAST) Program is a collaborative effort between the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. The Foundation realized that to best assist families and departments who had lost a firefighter in the line of duty – they needed to have trained personnel on the ground and available to help when requested within six hours of death. This could only be accomplished by developing a team of trained responders in each state who could be deployed immediately upon notification of a line-of-duty death. The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation began training personnel in these functions in October 2006 at the United States Fire Administration campus in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and has continued this training across the country wherever potential team members are available. Funds from the Department of Defense, Bureau of Justice Assistance grant make this vital program possible. No National Fallen Firefighters Foundation donation funds are used to perform any of the LAST functions.

These Local Assistance State Teams are made up of members who come from all areas of public safety, as well as survivors of line-of-duty deaths, and volunteers from all lines of work. They are all passionate about helping those who have suffered the loss of a family member or department member in the line of duty. Whenever possible, the team coordinator is a fire chief who has experienced a line of duty death and has in-depth knowledge of his state and its fire service activities. The coordinator will designate one or two backup positions to his position to ensure that there is someone available should there be a line of duty death in their state. There are many specialty members on each team such as a honor guard commander, chaplain, survivor, logistics specialist and benefit specialist just to mention a few. In large states, teams will try to duplicate these specialties in different areas of the state in order to shorten response times to all areas of the state. Team deployment can be as few as one member to a complete activation of the team depending on what assistance is requested by the department that has lost a member.