NFPA Journal - July/August 2019 - 31

Moriarty gratefully accepted. Initially, a task force of six
engines, three ladders, four ambulances, and five chief officers was dispatched from several communities in southern
New Hampshire, followed by several other task forces as the
incident continued. These assets responded to all three communities and later to a primary staging area that was created
in Lawrence.
By all accounts, the early phases of the incident were chaotic and overwhelming for just about everybody involved. At
the height of the incident in Lawrence, eight building fires
burned simultaneously, and five buildings had suffered some
type of explosion. One explosion caused a masonry chimney
to collapse onto a car, killing one of the vehicle's occupants,
an 18-year-old man. The Andover Fire Department was in the
process of responding to 11 simultaneous building fires, part
of a total of 79 incidents in the first hours of the event that
injured two civilians and two firefighters. In North Andover,
five simultaneous structure fires occupied the on-duty staff
and apparatus. Before mutual aid arrived, the town's fire prevention officer responded alone in a fire department SUV to
a working structure fire before additional units could assist.
At 4:42 p.m. on Thursday, the chiefs requested task forces
through the Massachusetts Statewide Mobilization Plan to
respond to the affected communities. This plan musters predetermined task forces, strike teams, and command officers
and deploys them to towns or regions requesting assistance
with large-scale or long-term incidents. Each task force
consisted of six engines and two ladder trucks, with two
chief officers and approximately 26 firefighters. The chiefs
identified a large parking lot beside a closed movie theater
in Lawrence as the regional staging area. All apparatus, staff,
and additional assets would respond to the staging area and
would be deployed from that location.
As fire resources mobilized, police chiefs in the three
communities were also putting their mutual aid plans into
effect-and, as with the fire departments, those plans were
soon overwhelmed by the number of calls for assistance. As
the calls for police mutual aid expanded, some of the arriving
assets were also routed to the staging area in Lawrence to
assist fire and EMS units.
As the staging area was established, the impacted communities were beginning to grasp the magnitude of the incident
and what would be necessary to manage and subdue it.
As outside resources arrived at the Lawrence staging area,
responders and government agencies-including canteens,
lighting units, municipal inspectors, and scores of utility
workers-began to set up a unified command system, where
all resources, regardless of their tasks, work under a single
command structure toward a common goal. From here, fire,
police, EMS, and utilities, as well as state and local government representatives, met to delegate tasks and put plans in
place to meet the immediate needs of the region and plan
for the next several 12-hour operational periods. The Massachusetts State Police command post vehicle was used as the
unified command headquarters at the theater parking lot.
Additionally, each town established its own local emergency
operations center, or EOC, to address community needs.

THE CHIEFS

ON USING INCIDENT COMMAND
BRIAN MORIARTY
Chief, Lawrence Fire Dept.
"We practice the ICS process in
everyday operations, and it was
used during the whole Merrimack
Valley incident.
"An important part of ICS is that
the roles people take on are functional and not based on rank. I had
officers assuming command roles
Moriarty
that they don't usually get to assume-a lieutenant was in charge at a working fire rather
than a chief officer. I put a firefighter paramedic, not an
officer, in charge of staging because I knew he had the
training and skill to run it without taking guff from people-and he did an outstanding job. Players changed, but
the process remained the same throughout the event."

GRAHAM ROWE
Deputy Chief, North
Andover Fire Dept.
"With this mostly being a fire
incident, the other responders and
emergency management agencies that were involved allocated
resources to assist. As our off-duty
crews arrived and multiple agencies were coming into town, I set
Rowe
up a staging area at our middle
school. When that was set up, dispatch would communicate directly with them to send trucks to new incidents.
Having all of the agencies present and having the ability
to share ideas to accomplish the strategies was very
effective.
"As the events slowed and fires came under control, I
transferred command to another officer who ran operations in North Andover while I moved to the regional
unified command in Lawrence. Having the ability to
increase the amount of people in the community for an
event like this while having my crews well-versed in ICS
made the event run as smoothly as it could, with no loss
of life and only minor injuries."

MICHAEL MANSFIELD
Chief, Andover Fire Dept.
"The emergency operations center
in Andover was activated within 30
minutes of the incident. All available town department and division
heads began actively responding
to the needs of the incident, and
pre-planning the needs for a
transition from response mode
Mansfield
to recovery mode. This action
allowed the town to respond to the disaster much more
efficiently and effectively during the first seven days."

N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

| 31

http:// nfpa.org/journal

NFPA Journal - July/August 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - July/August 2019