NFPA Journal - July/August 2019 - 28

BIG ASSIST
NFPA.ORG/BIG_ASSIST
Watch a video of NFPA fire
investigator Robert Duval
on the complex response
to the Merrimack Valley gas
explosions.
Read the preliminary NTSB
report on the incident.
Learn more on the
components of incident
command.

The afternoon grew even stranger.
While in command of the multifamily
structure fire, Moriarty was informed
by fire department dispatchers that
the neighboring Merrimack Valley
communities of Andover and North
Andover were also experiencing fires,
explosions, and reports of strong odors
of natural gas. All three towns are in
Essex County, in eastern Massachusetts,
and are part of a county-wide plan that
spells out what a fire department's
response should be based on an escalating number of alarms generated by
a fire or other event: two alarms, three
alarms, and so on, up to 10 alarms. The
gas events in the three communities
had overwhelmed the county's response
plan, and the fire departments in
Andover and North Andover were

28 | NFPA JOURNAL * J U L Y /A U G U S T 2 0 1 9

unavailable for response on subsequent
alarms in Lawrence. Moriarty would
have to look for help somewhere else.
He instructed his dispatchers to seek
mutual aid from communities north
of Lawrence, and to send single pieces
of Lawrence Fire Department apparatus to each incident until sufficient
resources could be gathered. He also
stressed that radio traffic needed to be
kept to a minimum due to the number
of units working simultaneously at several serious incidents.
Fire officials in Andover and North
Andover were coming to a similar realization. Michael Mansfield, the fire chief
in Andover, and Graham Rowe, deputy
fire chief in North Andover, were
able to use some of their run cards
for mutual aid, but quickly exhausted

those resources. As Lawrence looked
for help to the north, the other two
communities sought assistance from
communities to the south.
That was only the beginning of a
long night and a prolonged aftermath
for responders in the trio of communities affected by what would come to
be known as the Merrimack Valley gas
explosions, and for the hundreds of
mutual aid responders who eventually
assisted. As Moriarty had guessed, and
as investigators would later determine, work on a natural gas main in
Lawrence-conducted by the utility,
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts-had
caused a pressure spike throughout
the gas systems in all three towns.
Gas was forced under tremendous
pressure into homes, businesses, and

PREVIOUS SPREAD, FROM LEFT: SMOKESHOWING PHOTOGRAPHY.COM,
GETTY IMAGES, SMOKESHOWING PHOTOGRAPHY.COM, AP/WIDE WORLD

MANAGING CHAOS A Lawrence police officer directs traffic as firefighters work
to knock down a gas-related fire. More than 60 fires and at least three gas explosions
rocked the communities of Lawrence, North Andover, and Andover in a single
afternoon. At right, a Lawrence man died when a gas explosion in a home caused
a chimney to fall on the vehicle he was sitting in. PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES
http://www.NFPA.ORG/BIG_ASSIST http://www.PHOTOGRAPHY.COM http://www.PHOTOGRAPHY.COM
NFPA Journal - July/August 2019

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