Mass. team helps N.Y. recover from Sandy

The Northwest Massachusetts Incident Management Team, which provides support services during emergencies in Franklin County and western Massachusetts, is nearing the one-year anniversary of perhaps its most notable role: helping New York City recover from Superstorm Sandy.

The incident management team, formed in 2009, is one of two such units in Massachusetts. (The other is in Barnstable County.) The team typically coordinates logistical and technical assistance for firefighters and other first responders, ranging from parking, food and portable toilets to generators, light towers and communications technology.

“All of these kinds of coordination need help,” said Terry Dun, the public information officer for the Northwest Massachusetts Incident Management Team. “Our job is to work with the fire chiefs in the local communities.”

Last fall, after dealing with the local impact of Sandy, 14 members of the Northwest Massachusetts and Barnstable County incident management teams were summoned to New York City, where damage from flooding remained extensive. Roughly $50 million worth of equipment and materials were assembled at Citi Field, where the New York Mets play, and the stadium’s press box served as the command post.

The Massachusetts personnel worked with a contingent from Arizona.
“Our task was to manage and provide the pumps and generators and the lighting towers and those kinds of services to the city of New York,” Dun said. “It was basically a big warehouse operation. … We had to keep track of all of the equipment that was out in the field.”

Much of the equipment was sent to Breezy Point, the tip of the narrow Rockaway peninsula. It was only on their final day in New York that members of the Massachusetts contingent were able to tour Breezy Point. By then, Dun said, most of the community had been cleared of water.