(The following story by Milton Valencia appeared on the Boston Globe website on April 3.)
BOSTON — Amid the chaos of the train crash in Canton, they sat in a command post a few hundred feet from the wreckage. As rescue workers raced to help victims, the local fire and police chiefs and state and transit officials examined the scene and decided their next course of action.
“It’s called the incident command system,” Canton Fire Chief Thomas J. Ronayne III said. “We were trying to get control, instead of the incident controlling us.”
Amtrak officials shut down power to the tracks. Local police barricaded streets and established security. State Police sent a helicopter overhead to monitor the tracks, and emergency medical crews established communications channels with hospitals.
The response to the March 25 crash, in which a runaway freight car loaded with lumber crashed into a commuter train carrying 300 passengers, had been years in the mak ing, the product of drills and training seminars.
“Everyone was delegated an authority, and it was agreed to in the command post,” the chief said. “Everyone knew what the action plan was, and they knew what their responsibilities would be.”
The response went according to plan, the chief said. State and local agencies coordinated resources; hospitals were notified; and support crews arrived.
Within 65 minutes of the first emergency calls, 123 people had been transported to local hospitals. Within 95 minutes, the train and the surrounding area were checked three times for any last victims. All clear.
“If you were to lay the plan out, this was the way the incident played out,” the chief said. “All the training we had done came to work.”
In the post-Sept. 11 world of public safety, fire departments are granted command of disasters, and regional response plans are established. And such was the case in the train accident, which occurred at rush hour and had all the makings of a potential disaster.
No one suffered life-threatening injuries. But the scores of passengers stumbling out of the train, many bloody, created a chaotic scene that threatened to overwhelm local authorities.
Within minutes of arriving at the scene, Fire Captain Andy Morgan declared a mass-casualty event that triggered a regional response. A second alarm brought police and fire units from other towns and an ambulance strike team to the scene.
Within 25 minutes, a command post had been set up. By 5:40 p.m., just over a half-hour after the first crews arrived, a third alarm was sounded for more help, and by 6:20 p.m. a fifth alarm was sounded.
By then, a mass mobilization plan had been activated. A second ambulance strike team, for a total of 35 ambulances, was summoned. Fire engine and ladder trucks from 14 neighboring communities arrived. Firefighters helped transport victims to ambulances, set up perimeters, and cordon off streets. Even a Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority bus was used to transport victims with less severe injuries to a local hospital.
“Everything seemed to just flow,” Ronayne said. “Our mission was to come in and take care of the injured and entrapped, and we had that authority.”
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Once the scene was cleared, MBTA investigators and Transit Police began to investigate.
The response plan had been designed before the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Local public safety crews were told to develop a response to any incident that could occur on the rail line, and the meetings had been held in Canton.
Ronayne said local crews went over the plan during a table-top exercise in January and again in February. Plans for initial response, ambulance crews, and mutual aid for each town had been developed for any disaster.
“There was a level of planning going on regionally, in addition to the local level,” said state Fire Marshal Stephen D. Coan, who set up the command post for local crews during the response. “It’s a partnership between the state and local communities that resulted in a very robust regional response plan. The most important thing is it starts with the local public safety authorities.”
The plan included local hospitals. Milton Hospital, Signature Healthcare’s Brockton Hospital, Caritas Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, and Caritas Norwood Hospital had been designated sites to receive patients, and together they had received more than 100 crash victims.
The rest had been brought to other local hospitals, and some victims went to hospitals or doctor’s offices on their own.
Dr. Andrew Geller, an emergency room physician at Caritas Norwood Hospital, thought the phone call he received while on a trip to Wal-Mart with his wife in Framingham was another drill in the often practiced response plan.
“This is the kind of scenario you practice, and I thought [they] were kidding,” said Geller, whose hospital accepted 48 patients.
The call, he said, went something like, “Hi . . . there’s been a train crash in the town of Canton and there have been multiple victims. How long would it take you to get in?”
“This was literally what you train for, what you prepare for,” said Geller.
He raced to the hospital. Patients had cuts and bruises on their faces. One had a fractured shoulder.
“I’m thinking, this is the real thing. This is not a drill.”
The hospital has its own disaster plan, too, he said. A day-surgery unit was turned into an emergency room, where patients with less severe injuries were treated. Nurses stayed on duty.
Surgeons were on call for any consultations.