In early February, 10,000 Wisconsinites marched on the state capitol in Madison to stave off an attempt by Republican Gov. Scott Walker to strip state workers of their collective-bargaining rights. The protests lasted more than three weeks. To manage protests, public-safety agencies converged at the Madison Fire Department’s command post to run operations, according to Chief Debra Amesqua.

Amesqua is a nearly 30-year veteran of the fire service and is the city’s first female fire chief. She runs a career department that has about 370 personnel and offers ALS transport and special teams, including hazmat, scuba, high-angle rescue and emergency policing, among others. Because Madison is home to both the state capitol and the University of Wisconsin, the fire department has civil-response plans already in place, she said. During the union protests, the department activated its preplanned systems, including the command post located inside its administrative building where multiple police and fire agencies could converge for communications and operations planning.

The move let city, university and capitol law-enforcement work with the fire department for more seamless communications and incident management, Amesqua said. She spoke further with FIRE CHIEF about the incident, including the steps for preplanning incidents and lessons learned.

Did the department receive forewarning about the governor’s anti-union push?
We did not know how the governor’s budget repair bill was going to look until he actually presented it. The minute we had the presentation from the governor, we knew immediately that there would be people — particularly in the city of Madison — who would certainly come out and voice their opinion. We have a long history of protests dating back into the sixties and a long history in the state of strong unions and collective bargaining and being an advocate of working rights.

Once news broke, what was the fire department’s next step?
The fire department is responsible for the emergency operating center and the command post, which is the operations component. So our responsibility was to make sure they could communicate with each other and had the latest technology and video conferencing because we had several branches of the emergency operation that were in different locations, including inside the capitol building. The coordination of those officers came from the fire administration building.

Our first step was to set up the command post, to ensure we had working telephones and video technology. We looked at how radios operated that were used by the different agencies brought in through the tri-state area. We immediately ordered phones and batteries for portable radios. We made sure that all of the televisions we had in the separate offices in the fire department could link into the video-conferencing ability.

Did your role change as the protests were growing?
We circled the wagons and made sure everyone understood what the goal of the operations was. It was very important that all agencies agreed that we were not going to be arresting individuals. We were going to communicate clearly with our intent and work with union leadership and individual protesters and resolve any differences as amicably as possible without an arrest. It is the culture and the mindset of the city of Madison. The trick was bringing in agencies from all over the tri-state area and making sure they understood the rules of engagement — telling them that even though they thought of arresting someone to step back, take a deep breath and see if they can resolve it without an arrest.

How were EMT teams stationed?
The firefighters are EMTs and paramedics, so they are well-trained in those events. We had every intent of ensuring our paramedics were in locations — because we knew we’d get large crowds. It was important they could maneuver in and out of those crowds to get to someone who needed critical care. So we worked with police officers to make sure a paramedic could get to an individual right away and then be escorted to get them into the ambulance and send them to the hospital.

Did your EMT mission change throughout the event?
Out-of-town law enforcement worked extremely long hours. We were more concerned about the police officers and their well being, than we were with the protestors — who were very well organized. We set up an area where we were taking officers blood pressures, and we were monitoring, watching how they were reacting to different situations. We ended up learning this was a much bigger task than just putting paramedics in charge of taking blood pressures. So, we hired outside people to come in and truly evaluate the police officers as they were working. In addition, the emotional stress of the police officers was evaluated by professionals after we realized the [event] would last more than a few days.

What were the lessons learned?
No. 1, you must have somebody available 24/7 from the IT department. Things break and then there can be complications from the amount of agencies we work with. In this instance, it was critical to have somebody onboard who could help us with the computers as we were working with them.

The other lesson I saw from watching the outside law enforcement agencies was that a shortage of personnel meant information didn’t transfer from one shift to the other. So ensure you practice passing the information on during shift changes.