MEMA praises Wareham’s emergency planning

Wareham in March received high marks from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency for the town’s swift creation of a local emergency planning committee and emergency response plan.

Federal law requires all cities and towns to have a local emergency planning committee or be part of a regional entity that has one, according to Doug Forbes, a MEMA local coordinator. These committees develop plans to ensure coordination among police, firefighters, the public works department, the harbormaster, the board of health and other entities in emergency preparedness and response, Forbes said.

For full certification, a city or town also needs to have an emergency response plan.

Forbes said such preparation can pay off in the event of an accident such as a train derailment, for example. If local officials are aware that their cemetery department is using a backhoe just blocks from the site of the accident, they can quickly move it and use it to create embankments to contain a hazardous spill.

Wareham Police Chief Richard Stanley, who served as North Andover’s police chief for 25 years before coming to Wareham in 2011, acknowledged that the coastal community was “ill-prepared” in the area of emergency response planning.

Within one year, the town formed its local emergency planning committee and developed an emergency response plan, which was unveiled last December. The urgency, Stanley said, was for the town to be able to document that it had taken proper steps to mitigate dangers “if something bad were to happen.”

“If the town isn’t taking the lead,” Stanley said, the public “should be asking the question, ‘Why haven’t you followed the law?’”