When, in the afternoon of Sept. 13, Lawrence Fire Chief Brian Moriarty first got the call about house explosions and fires across the south side of his city, he was driving back up to the Merrimack Valley from Boston after taking an emergency medical service class, hoping to meet a few guys after work.
“I’m on my way,” Moriarty said, and immediately shifted gears.
He turned on his radio, and listened to the transmissions as they started to come in quick succession.
The fire department called North Andover and Andover — the first communities Lawrence turns to for mutual aid — only to find out they were dealing with the same thing: overpressurized gas lines caused multiple fires that day, injured dozens, and killed one young man from Lawrence.
Moriarty picked up his radio. Through the cacophony of transmissions from dispatchers and first responders, his voice remained unflustered.
“I just said: ‘Stay calm, we’re going to have a lot of calls,’” he recalled. “We deal in catastrophe. I knew I had to stay calm if they were going to be calm.”