The Northern New England Blog

By Jennifer Costa, Red Cross regional communications director “I was driving down the street, and I saw this light, pillowy smoke coming out from behind some trees near a row of buildings.” John Montes, Red Cross regional disaster officer for Northern New England, is no stranger to emergency response. But these unexpected disasters do not typically happen right in front of him. “As I got within a block of it, there was a fire truck outside and then there was a big boom and everything shook,” Montes recalled. “My instinct was to get out of there because it was not good. It was probably a gas line. I pulled into a gas station and turned around. But very quickly that area got closed off and there were emergency vehicles coming from every angle and there was gridlock.”  According to New Hampshire fire officials around 2:15pm on February 2, a 911 call came in reporting a gas smell at a mental health clinic in Nashua. The building is located on one of the busiest streets in the city. As ...