The Augusta unit of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team remained on alert after an aborted call-up last week.

''We expect to be on alert through Christmas'' to be ready to relieve teams already deployed in the New York City area, said Beth NeSmith, a trauma clinical nurse specialist at Medical College of Georgia Hospital and Clinics. If the whole team is not called up, individual members may be called up here and there, said team member Phil Coule, assistant professor of emergency medicine at MCG.

''It's highly probable at least some of the team will go, just to backfill hospitals and other medical teams,'' particularly with the ongoing nursing shortage, Dr. Coule said.

After being honored by Augusta Mayor Bob Young, it was easier for team members to gather in front of the municipal building and joke about the anxiety and concerns that blanketed them the week before.

Dr. Coule had been turned back from boarding a plane at Augusta Regional Airport when the true magnitude of the attacks began to sink in.

''Then people started raising the question, 'Was the DMAT going to get deployed?''' Dr. Coule said.

The call came a few hours later but it would take a long time for team members to gather supplies and then head off to Fort Gillem near Atlanta to join another team. Then came the real heavy lifting - loading an 18-wheeler with everything a self-contained mobile hospital would need, including sanitary facilities and kitchens, said Rosalie Gearman, a nurse at MCG.

''It's like moving a hospital,'' Dr. Coule said. Then, just as they were leaving the base, their bus got a flat tire that took nearly four hours to get fixed, Ms. Gearman said.

The reception along the way was incredible, with strangers thanking them and handing them free food and drinks, said James Gill, a shock trauma ICU nurse.

''It was like Christmas,'' he said.

After all that, about 5 p.m. Sept. 12, after most of the 11 Augusta members had been up since Tuesday morning, word came as they pulled into a Virginia motel that they probably wouldn't be needed. They turned around and headed back the next day, checking in every hour to see whether they would be needed and would have to turn around again.

And they are still ready to be called, team members said.

''If they ask me to go and shuffle a bucket of rubble, I'd do it,'' Dr. Coule said.