
The name of Herbert Fothergill is well known to Massachusetts fire buffs and historians. He was the fire chief of the Chelsea, Massachusetts fire department in October 1973 when on a windy Sunday afternoon a fire started in what was known as the “Rag Shop District,” due to many junk and salvage dealers being located there. The fire spread due to the winds and water issues and in the end according to reports eighteen square blocks of the city were completely destroyed. Chief Fothergill led the department and the approximately 1,000 firefighters who converged on the city, to save it. Massachusetts State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan who responded as a young firefighter to the Chelsea conflagration said this about Fothergill, “When all is said and done, there is one person who is the commanding officer, I think that everyone who was at that fire that day and any of the scholars who have studied that fire really know that Chief Fothergill had and never lost command of that fire. His strategies and tactics were well defined. If they weren’t honed in as well as they were, more of Chelsea and surrounding communities could have been lost that day.”
As a voracious reader and student of fireground command examples, Fothergill’s performance and leadership provided me a wonderful example on how to lead when your city is faced with a major emergency whether weather related, fire, terrorism, etc. The smaller your community in my opinion the bigger the challenge to handle these issues without further problems or adding to an already tough situation.
On September 12, 2018 Brian Moriarity, chief of the Lawrence, Massachusetts fire department offered me a new lesson in leadership during a major emergency in real time thanks to today’s social media and the ability to monitor radio traffic via the internet and I wish to share it with you. I have always been a fan of listening to fireground audio, closing your eyes and taking yourself to the event and playing out in your mind how you would handle based on your resources. It’s the same as listening to your favorite music while relaxing; good music takes you away to any place you want to go and when it comes to our great profession, fireground audio does the same to enhance your ability to handle future like events.
During my thirty years on the job I have followed the Lawrence, Massachusetts fire department. Their city seemed to be like mine as far as demographics with only difference being Lawrence’s slightly larger population. The city experienced a huge arson epidemic in the early nineties and also what drew me to follow them was a well-documented fight with a mayor who wanted to cut the department. This again was very similar to my department who had a similar fight in the mid-2000s. Lawrence fire department staffs four engines, two trucks, and a rescue under the command of a deputy chief (shift commander) and protects 70,000 plus residents in an area of roughly 7.4 square miles.
Chief Moriarity responds to most multiple alarms in his city something not many fire chiefs in command of smaller to mid-sized departments in the United States do. Most sit behind desks or distance themselves from the street and when they MUST go are often overmatched and fail especially in the eyes of their subordinates. You can read all the fire service leadership books you want but I will always take a chief who is going to be in the street directing and facing the emergency. There is a time and place for organized incident management and in today’s fire service if you aren’t organized and running incident management you will certainly face public ridicule, create a dangerous fireground, and be tasked by subject matter experts in official post-action reports, not to mention the keyboard commanders on social media. What took place in Lawrence last week with the over-pressurization of natural gas causing multiple working fires at once is not in too many playbooks and I doubt many, if anyone has procedures on how to handle it is not something I am not even sure the great Alan Brunacini envisioned his command product handling, but it was faced by Moriarity and his department and handled with professionalism, poise and grace in the eyes of this student located nearly seven-hundred miles away.
In listening to the first minutes of audio Moriarity (Car 20) responds to a second working fire and takes command while his on-duty shift commander (Car 21) is running the first event called into Lawrence Fire Department. While I am not 100% sure at the time of this writing but it appears that the fire Moriarity is taking command of is in a larger multiple family dwelling. While he is coordinating efforts to handle this fire the dam breaks and multiple calls start flooding the dispatcher. Moriarity directs efforts across the city while running a multiple alarm fire himself. While listening to the audio he can be heard calming his members, advising them not to tie up the radio, to improve their language of size up and had the wherewithal to make sure he had people available to direct mutual aid crews from distant areas who were responding into the city. Again, all this while running a working fire! Yes, many will worry about situational awareness and I too while listening was thinking how in the world can this guy be so focused on everything and command his fireground, yet he did, and he was simply amazing and provides some of the best command training for us who always attain at getting better at our craft.
Audio: Lawrence 9-13-18 Part I
Audio: Lawrence 9-13-18 Part II
I encourage you to listen to the audio and put yourself in the role of the Lawrence fire chief. How would your department handle this? How would your chief handle this event? Or if you are the chief, did Moriarity’s actions provide an example to you of what it’s about to lead in a crisis? From now on when I hear people complain about how leadership in our fire service is lacking I will acknowledge that might be the case but will direct them to the Lawrence fire department on September 12, 2018 and Chief Brian Moriarity. He never lost command and it would be an absolute honor to work under such a leader. I also encourage those who write, blog, tweet, etc. about leadership to interview the Chief and use his example in your dissertations to the masses. I look forward to the after action reports I am sure will come regarding this tragic event but being able to listen to the audio now will also assist in the lessons learned and how to handle future events like this.
I believe that historians will be able to use Coan’s quote mentioned above regarding Fothergill’s performance in Chelsea in 1973 and substitute the name Moriarity and the city of Lawrence to provide another awesome example of what fireground leadership looks and sounds like.
Thank You Chief!
Joseph Pronesti is a thirty-year veteran of the city of Elyria, Ohio fire department, he is currently an Assistant fire chief and commands the B platoon. He is a member of the current UL advisory board looking at coordinated fire attack, a frequent contributor to Firefighter Nation and Fire Engineering and a FDIC presentor who will be presenting at the 2019 FDIC “Main Street Firefighting” on Tuesday April 9th at 0800. He can be reached at efdchief3@outlook.com and on Twitter @efdchief3.