On Monday morning, Schuylkill County Emergency Management Coordinator John M. Matz was standing in the 911 center, chatting with a dispatcher about a new ambulance, when the calls started coming in about a massive crash on I-81 at the Minersville exit onto Route 901.

“Everybody that had a cellphone started calling 911,” he said.

“We were getting phone calls, a lot of phone calls,” said county 911 Director Scott D, Krater. “People who were in the middle of it, on the side of the road, in their cars. They’re driving, and suddenly they’re in this tangled mess of vehicles.”

As it became clear the crash involved about 80 vehicles, with dozens of injuries and several fatalities, Krater and Matz swung into action, coordinating emergency medical crews, law enforcement, firefighters, hospitals and community groups.

Matz synchronized the organizations, alerting hospitals and making sure shelters were available, arranging transportation, and talking with state Department of Transportation officials to clear and salt roads and determine the fastest routes for ambulances and fire crews to get to the crash.

“We’re looking at the severity of the crash and victims’ needs,” Matz said.

“Can we use air med? Somebody checked the helicopters, were they able to fly and land close to the scene? Where could they go once they get there?” he said.

Paramedics from the landing pad just outside Minersville drove to the crash, Matz said.

He knew they’d have to get people to emergency shelters, so he called the Schuylkill Transportation System to get buses on the road.

Matz’s focus? “It’s us reaching out to those with the expertise and them doing it.”

In addition to STS and PennDOT, he networked Wegman’s warehouse at the nearby Highridge Industrial Park, the Schuylkill County United Way, the Red Cross, Minersville fire and ambulance crews, and local hospitals and hotels.

By 6 p.m. Monday, people involved in the massive crash had been taken to local hotels, obtained rental vehicles, or picked up by friends, relatives or companies they worked for, Matz said.

They included people from out of state, including Vermont, New York and South Carolina.

On the interstate, operations continued. Firefighters remained until well after midnight to handle burning vehicles and stanch diesel and gasoline spills.

Fire companies set up water shuttling operations.

As of Tuesday evening, towing companies began to clear away the crushed and burned vehicles.

Matz met with PennDOT officials, who surveyed the damage and formulated a plan: Once all the vehicles and debris had been cleared from the highway, they would mill the road from shoulder to shoulder “because there was diesel and gasoline and ash, to make sure there was nothing left on the highway to leave slick spots,” Matz said.

The state Department of Environmental Protection was called in because of spilled diesel, gas and engine fluids. DEP assessed soils to determine what the short term and long terms needs were.

Pennsylvania State Police and the Schuylkill County Coroner’s Office worked to identify and remove those who had died.

The response

Krater said the first 911 call came in at 10:34 a.m. and the dispatch of fire, emergency medical services and law enforcement was sent 2 minutes later.

“Subsequent to that, we dispatched what was requested by the units on the scene,” he said.

911 dispatchers handled a total of 121 calls in the 45 minutes between 10:30 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. Several of the calls were automatically made from vehicles using OnStar and other telematics.

“Nothing really prepares you for it,” Krater said. “You get the first call, and you just buckle down and do your job. You’re prepared for a mass casualty incident, but something of that magnitude is not your typical mass casualty.”

“We just try and get as much information as we can for EMS to get to the scene to triage people. Our people did a fantastic job,” he said.

“Our dispatchers did a great job of getting the information out to first responders. We are the first first responders,” he said. “You prepare yourself. You know your business and you know what to do. But this was red line after red line after red line, one right after the other for a long time.”

Meanwhile, dispatchers were also handling calls about house fires, he said.

“I can’t remember an accident of that magnitude in the 35 years I’ve been here,” Krater said.

“I believe in five hours we went from transporting 24 people to hospitals and had over 100 people from the interstate. STS took 112 people to Wegmans and the Good Will Fire & EMS in Minersville.

“First responders did a hell of a job. They went from vehicle to vehicle, all while dealing with keeping the fires contained. An ‘X’ spray painted on vehicle windows meant the vehicle had been checked,” he said.

Emergency officials are well trained for their jobs, but much of it is on-the-job training.

“It’s not specific training, EMC Matz said. “It’s a combination of training and experience from previous incidents. Many of us have been involved in the fire service for years; we bring that experience to incidents like this. We also bring the relationships with other organizations and agencies that we’ve built over the years.”

Matz said improvements to county emergency response planning initiated by Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator John Blickly have enabled services to be provided more quickly and smoothly.

The improvements include bringing more people and organizations to the table to plan out responses to “what if?” scenarios.

They also include a long-term recovery committee, first used in 2018 when Tremont was flooded.

“When we bring more people to the table, we get not only their expertise, but their network of contacts,” Matz said. “That has worked very well for us.”

Boots on the ground

Frank Zangari Jr. has been a firefighter since 1973 and president of the Schuylkill County Fire Chiefs Association for more than 30 years.

He’s also the chief of the Rangers Hose Company in Girardville.

“It was like a bomb went off on I-81,” he said.

Zangari said he arrived on scene with Emergency Management Agency staff support first responders.

The fires were being put out, and people were being rescued.”

As president of the Fire Chiefs Association, we’re trained for those large incidents. My role was to support the teams that had boots on the ground,” he said.

Zangari has trained to handle large incidents the National Fire Academy, Harrisburg Community College, and the Southeastern Regional Task Force.

“In Schuylkill County, firefighters are 100 percent volunteer. Training is on your own time. In this case, the Task Force was not implemented; it was all Schuylkill County,” he said.

Monday’s mass casualty incident “all started with the first 911 call to the center. There were multiple dispatchers, who were answering calls, keeping people calm, and dispatching the resources that are needed for that call,” he said.

“Our 911 center, it’s not like a TV show. In real life, there are no commercial breaks - every second counts. We don’t pause for commercials. It takes an enormous amount of training and professionalism, and it starts right there before the boots hit the ground,” Zangari said.

The crash was complicated due to slick road surfaces and the tangle of burning vehicles.

“We had fire apparatus that turned sideways on the road. We had water issues, we had to use tankers. All the heavy rescue teams in the county were there.”

To make matters worse, there was a house fire at the same time.

First responders risked their own lives to save others.

The efforts were to “save life. Property was not the issue. It was survival,” he said.

First responders were risking their lives going under tractor-trailers and braving fires to rescue victims.

“I was honored,” Zangari said. “It was the best and safest operation I have seen in my entire career.”

He noted that the firefighters were all volunteers.

“We are the most fortunate county in Pennsylvania. They risk their lives, they leave their families for hours. Some firefighters were there 12 hours.”

First responders are thinking, ‘I want to call my wife and tell her I’m OK. In the meantime, they’re pulling people out of cars who are covered in blood. They treated these people in those vehicles like they were their own mom and dad. It was just amazing,” Zangari said.

State troopers did an excellent job of keeping traffic cleared so first responders could work.

“Everyone worked unified. It was beyond professional,” he said.

Mike M. Mistishen, director of Operations/EMS for Good Will Fire Company and Minersville EMS, said his crews were “active at 10:36 a.m. as the crash was immediately upgraded to a mass casualty incident with multiple people entrapped.”

Minersville and Tremont EMS were first on scene. “We started the triaging process, he said.

Mistishen went to the Wegman’s warehouse to “set up triage of the walking wounded and uninjured. The triages were done by Minersville and Wegman’s own medical teams.

Eight patients were taken to local hospitals. The Red Cross was there, too, he said.

“At that point, we decided to open the Good Will as a shelter.

“We needed to have our resources spread out in order to be more personable to traumatized folks,” he said.

STS buses took people to the Good Will. Family members arrived to pick up other victims.

“One husband drove from Ontario to pick up his wife,” Mistishen said.

The Red Cross provided vouchers for hotels.

“That’s our goal. We’re a community-based service. We’re not in this for ourselves. I’ve never been so grateful to be part of such a team in this county,” Mistishen said.

He said Schuylkill agencies have a tradition of working together.

“Our community involvement was huge. Agencies worked hand in hand. It was a controlled chaos,” he said.

“The valued effort of every single individual that was there played a role.”