Alewife station closed for 'police activity?'

Boston Globe reported that the Styrofoam container at Ashmont was labled "Biological Research".

TPR37777 wrote:Part of the problem is that Mass general law dictates that the fire department is in charge of all hazardous materials incidents. Fire departments tend to make more dramatic and unnecessary closure decisions because they do not answer to the general public nor are they held to the same standard as other public agencies. An example of this was the leak in the tank car near the BET when half the north shore transit system was shut down and no one questioned it. The MBTA police take into account the disruption to the public when making critical decisions concerning the transit system, the Cambridge Fire Department does not.

Pardon my language but that is crap. Guess who was right alongside the Cambridge Fire Department during the entire incident? TPD. Guess who was the ones who were alongside the Boston Fire Department during the entire incident earlier that day? The TPD. The fire department doesn't shut down stations or bus terminals without the OK from the TPD and the TPD doesn't shut down the stations or bus terminals without the fire departments OK. There's a thing call command and control- they work together and don't do something without the other knowing.

BC Eagle wrote:

TPR37777 wrote:Part of the problem is that Mass general law dictates that the fire department is in charge of all hazardous materials incidents. Fire departments tend to make more dramatic and unnecessary closure decisions because they do not answer to the general public nor are they held to the same standard as other public agencies. An example of this was the leak in the tank car near the BET when half the north shore transit system was shut down and no one questioned it. The MBTA police take into account the disruption to the public when making critical decisions concerning the transit system, the Cambridge Fire Department does not.

It's my understanding that the leak in the BET tank car was serious/dangerous enough to warrant the closures that resulted given the proximity of the Orange Line and commuter rail to where the tank car was located. Also, I think fire departments are more concerned with playing a potentially dangerous situation safe, than public opinion.

Anybody think they want to have sulfuric acid spreading all over the place and fouling up train service for days or even weeks AND have hundreds of people die because the trains were still running? Public safety comes first, convenience a distant second.

There's a big difference between shutting down because of an obviously dangerous acid leak, and shutting down because someone left their lunch bag on a train.

Ron Newman wrote:There's a big difference between shutting down because of an obviously dangerous acid leak, and shutting down because someone left their lunch bag on a train.

No there isn't. Not when you don't have a clue what is inside that bag. You do not rush situations.

I'm guessing Ron does not work in the area of Public Safety. The emergency service personnel not only have to be concerned with explosives, they must also deal with biological threats. I would guess that the response to each partiular threat has its own proticol.

I am getting concerned that since a few years have passed since 9/11 and most people couldn't seem to care less what happened in Madrid that opinions like those held by Ron are becoming increasingly common.

More and more people are becoming impatient and down right rude when asked to deal with emergency situations. One should remember that a lot of Boston's commuters are people that spend there days in cubicles and don't have to deal with the public or manage their way through operational problems like people that work in transit or emergency services or other kinds of hands on jobs like manufacturing, distribution or other service jobs.
That's why we hear...just pick it up and move it...

As far as this whole mess is cocerned. Me being in public saftey i do know that when it comes to Hazmat incidents or any incident in general. The rescuers saftey is priority (1) the victims priority (2) and lastly buildings and property are Priority (3). As far as both incidents ar e concerned the one at Ashmont was a Tier 3 Level response, meaning it's no joke and Hazmat units were included and it was a full fledged incident. And For Cambridge FD didn't get to see much of that but it follows the same guidelines. So, public saftey officials don't really care if their closing up a subeay station for a few hours, they do what they have to to make the situation under control and so that it's safe for people to use. They try to do it in a timley manner but sometimes you can't time incidents like these