The District:

The District’s membership is made up of 14 communities of approximately 350 square miles with a population of over 180,000 people within the Route 93 corridor. Essentially the District is bordered in the east by Route 125 and the Merrimack River to the west. North and south borders are defined by Manchester, Route 101 and the Massachusetts state line. The District was formed in 1993 to develop a regional approach in dealing with the increasing amounts of hazardous materials being used and transported within these communities as well as to comply with federal regulations concerning preparing for chemical emergencies.

The District functions as a Regional Emergency Planning Commission (R.E.P.C.) providing planning functions, risk analysis, and hazard identification, for our member communities. The REPC works to prepare the district for the potential of a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incident. These include unplanned chemical releases from facilities located within the district, transportation emergencies, as well as terrorist type events that could occur within the district.

The District draws it’s funding from an annual assessment from each community as well as from grants and donations .The District is managed by an Operations Committee consisting of Chief Fire Officers from each community. This committee is overseen by a Board of Directors consisting of elected representatives from each community. The District employees a part-time REPC Director to manage the administration functions of the District, including grants management, financial management, and emergency planning,

The District operates a technical emergency response team. This response team is overseen by one of the member community’s Chief Fire Officer who serves in the Technical Team Liaison position. The team maintains a readiness response posture to permit it to immediately deploy an appropriate response to a District’s community’s request for help involving an unplanned release of potentially dangerous chemicals within their jurisdiction. While the team primarily prepares for response to unplanned accidental chemical releases it is equipped and trained to deal with a variety of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) scenarios. The team maintains a host of specialized response equipment to deal with chemical and environmental emergencies.