DC-10 Crash Provides Severe Test Of Suburban Mutual Aid Procedures
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Staff Correspondent
“Nine years ago we tested our suburban mutual aid procedures with ‘Operation Libra,’ ” Deputy Chief Mike Buckley of Des Plaines, Ill., said recently. “That was a simulated plane crash in Mt. Prospect. We had planned another test for this year—but we got the real thing instead.”
And horribly real it was. Last May 25, a fully-loaded DC-10 jetliner crashed after takeoff just outside Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, killing 272 on board plus three others on the ground. This was indeed a severe test not only of suburban mutual aid, but of cooperation between Chicago and its neighbors.
Unlike more compact eastern areas, such as around Boston, those outlying communities form a sprawling patchwork of cities, townships, villages, and islands of unincorporated territories. Most major fires are beyond the resources of any single jurisdiction. As an outgrowth of individual aid arrangements which had grown up over the years, the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS) came into being about 1970, primarily serving areas north and west of Chicago.
Dispatching system
By 1979, MABAS included four divisions encompassing 56 fire departments in five counties. One “headquarters station” within each division coordinates the dispatching for that division as well as liaison with the others. Assignment cards, going up to five alarms, divide each division into zones in which any alarm gets the same basic response. This dispatching system resembles that used in some larger communities elsewhere, such as Minneapolis-St. Paul.
A local, or still, alarm gets a standard response from the jurisdiction where it occurs—perhaps two or three engines, a ladder company of the location warrants (which may have to come in from a neighboring town), the local chief, and a rescue unit or ambulance. If the emergency escalates to a box alarm, more apparatus fills out the assignment as dictated by the card. Each subsequent greater alarm adds two or three more pumpers as a minimum. Which specific units are sent is determined by each community.
As their companies become committed, other chiefs respond according to the card. A complete system of progressive moveups keeps all areas at minimum coverage. The local chief remains in charge, delegating other chief officers to assist as they arrive.
Many of the smaller towns use volunteers or paid-on-call men. To minimize traffic problems, these respond only with their apparatus, rather than going directly to the fire by private car. All men are called via local radio alerting systems, automatically triggered by any box alarm.
Mutual aid frequency
Within their local still alarm areas, each community uses its own local radio frequency. But once an incident assumes box alarm status, all participating fire departments are notified by the division dispatcher to switch immediately to the single NIFERN (Northern Illinois Fire Emergency Radio Network) radio frequency of 154.265 mHz. Some departments use a three-digit numbering system, such as the 100 series in Elk Grove Village, the 400 series in Arlington Heights, etc., to identify each company. But there are too many units to use such numbering everywhere, so the department name is used to prefix most radio messages.
The May 25 disaster occurred in the heart of MABAS Division I. The small-scale map shown can only hint at the confusing zigzag boundary problems that characterize this region, making some kind of organized cooperation among fire services a necessity. The area shown includes about 100 square miles containing 340,000 residents in 14 communities.
Ironically, though certainly fortunate for persons on the ground, the plane came down just north of busy Touhy Ave., and south of the even busier Northwest Tollway, in one of the few tiny islands of empty land in the entire area. A little farther on, its path would have brought the DC-10 down in a large oil tank farm. Had it taken off from the parallel runway a mile to the southwest, the crash would have occurred in the heart of Elk Grove Village’s huge Centex Industrial Park.
Wide World Photo
Officer sees fireball
It was in that tract, containing 2700 separate firms, that Elk Grove Village fire fighters first thought the accident had taken place. At 3:04 p.m., the officer commanding Engine 118 at Elk Grove Village’s Greenleaf Ave. station in the Centex area, seeing the tremendous fireball and smoke cloud from a mile away, notified his dispatcher that he was responding with the 1250-gpm pumper to an apparent explosion near Elmhurst & Higgins Roads (a point about 1/3 mile from the actual crash). Engine 117, an ambulance, and Aerial 128 were sent from other Village stations two minutes later, accompanied by Chief John Henrici and his deputy.
The open field where the crash occurred is beyond the Elk Grove village limits. Fire-rescue service in that tract, containing the tank farm along with several mobile home courts and some other commercial property, had been provided since 1978 by a private corporation—American Emergency Services, Inc., operating as the Elk Grove Rural Fire District. This agency is not a part of MABAS. Its chief, Gary Jensen, has several paid assistants plus a small force of call men, operating out of a former garage about a mile northwest of the crash site, with a pumper, an ambulance, and a pair of former Air Force crash rigs. These units began responding at 3:07.
Meanwhile, controllers in the O’Hare tower, having seen the plane go down, had alerted the field’s three fire stations before the DC-10 even struck the ground. These house a total of seven crash rigs plus several regular Chicago Fire Department companies: Engines 9, 10, and 12, Truck 63, the chief of the 25th Battalion, and the marshal of Division 8.
Airport units respond
Crash Rescue Units 1, 5, 6, 7,10, and 11 responded out the airport’s northwest access roads to Touhy Ave., then, using their off-road capability, into the field north and east of the burning wreckage. One of the plane’s engines was the largest piece still intact. Pools of blazing fuel covered a wide area (the plane carried 9000 gallons at takeoff) where the CFD units went to work at once, using water and foam carried on the crash rigs.
The reason the site was still largely open land was that until 1962, it had been the private Ravenswood Airport. Several old metal hangars remained at the western edge of the property, 320 W. Touhy Ave. Two of these were leased to construction firms. Other buildings housed an airplane parts business. Explosion and fire at impact ignited most of these structures. It was there that the three ground casualities occurred. The Elk Grove Rural ambulance crew, aided by Chicago officers working at the nearby canine training center for police dogs, conveyed at least one burn victim from this exposure to a hospital.
The more serious life and property hazard was the Oasis Mobile Home Court at 400 W. Touhy, just west of the old hangar buildings, and 200 feet from the point of impact. Flaming fuel and wreckage pelted the trailers, setting several afire. Eventually, nearly 1000 residents (three of them injured) were evacuated from 300 mobile homes. While most of the CFD units attacked the main fire in aircraft wreckage, the Elk Grove Rural and Village forces took their stand in the streets of the Oasis Court.
Orders second alarm
It took Henrici about six minutes to get there. While still on the way, he was notified through Elk Grove Rural that a major aircrash had occurred. At 3:10, he radioed for a MABAS second alarm, as well as an emergency alert to five area hospitals (soon canceled when it was apparent no one had survived the crash). The second alarm brought total suburban response up to seven engines, three aerials, two rescue squads, three ambulances and two chiefs from eight communities.
Henrici took initial command as first arriving chief officer within the MABAS organization. He shared leadership with Mt. Prospect’s fire chief, who had responded on his own before the second alarm call. The two set up a command post at the Touhy Ave. entrance to the mobile home part, in which at least three trailers were now burning. As other units arrived, a van from Buffalo Grove was used for communications. It had different radio frequencies on board and one of the two chiefs remained there at all times.
Except for a small hydrant on a local well at the north end of the Oasis property, no water was available within a mile, so tank lines were used for the initial attack. To get more water, via relay from the nearest available hydrants, Henrici called for simultaneous third and fourth MABAS alarms (pumpers only) at 3:24. This brought six more engines.
Chicago companies dispatched
In the meantime, Chicago dispatched box alarm and second alarm (2-11 at 3:12 p.m.) assignments. Eventually, Chicago had on the scene a total of nine engines and three aerials, two Snorkels, two lighting units, two helicopters, and other special units with over 100 men. Since the CFD is not part of MABAS and remained on its own radio system, a suburban officer with a portable radio was detailed to remain with the Chicago command post as liaison.
CFD leadership was in greater depth than the suburban staff. A division marshal arrived on the first alarm and Fire Commissioner Richard Albrecht was flown in later by helicopter. But technically, Chicago had no jurisdiction over either the crash site or the structural fires, and CFD authorities cooperated fully with the MABAS officers.
Some of Chicago’s 2-11 companies had long runs and arrived together with the later MABAS units. As each engine reached the scene, Deputy Chief Michael Buckley of Des Plaines (nearest suburb to the east) had the task of assigning it to a position in the relay. The CFD sent its water task force on the 2-11, consisting of a pair of 2000-gpm pumpers, Engines 5 and 42, with a turret wagon plus a hose tender carrying a mile of 5-inch line. However, these downtown companies were 15 miles distant. By the time they arrived, the relay was already being set up, so contrary to some published reports, this heavy artillery was not used.
Wide World Photo
Help Chicago companies
It took an hour to control the various structural fires. Then, MABAS units, with over 200 men from 11 fire departments, worked with the CFD for two more hours to locate and tag bodies of the crash victims.
“This wasn’t really our job,” Henrici said. “So we turned it over to Cook County police as soon as possible. We didn’t move any bodies.”
Asked about the reaction of the fire fighters to the wholesale carnage, with almost all the bodies being in burned fragments, he replied that most seemed to take it well except that a couple of the younger men were “queasy” for a few days afterward.
Had there been any need for major lifesaving operations, at least 25 suburban ambulances were at the scene along with numerous heavy rescue and EMT units from MABAS Divisions I and III. Some of these responded voluntarily from communities not part of the MABAS organization, such as Roselle and Schiller Park. Last MABAS companies to pick up returned to quarters at 7:57 p.m., leaving the Rural crew to stand by during the night while a small army of investigators sifted through the debris.
As an aid in critiquing the incident, Buckley has prepared a complete audio-visual package containing slides plus an accompanying narrative for review by all those who took part.
Communications problems
“The MABAS system worked splendidly,” said Henrici. “But we did have some communications difficulties. One of the biggest problems lies with the police agencies—state, county, and city. They have talked about mutual aid agreements and common radio frequencies for some time, but nothing has happened. That may change now. One of the police chiefs is backing a mutual aid law enforcement frequency, and meetings are being held about that.
It was the scores of police units which caused the most traffic congestion in the vicinity. Police locked their parked squad cars and left the vehicles so that it was impossible to move them. Without common radio frequencies, officers couldn’t be reached.
Otherwise, traffic control was good. Only one main road—Touhy Ave.—led into the area. It was quickly sealed off east and west of the crash site, and outside the trailer parks, there are no residential areas close by.
For the future, explained Buckley, “We are working toward a better mobile command post, using a 20-foot van. We’ll get some hospital and police frequencies in there, plus radiotelephone and land-line connections. Each fire department will be asked to donate a transceiver on its own frequency.”
With that, MABAS will be even better prepared for its next “test.”
