Just before 5:00pm on Saturday 6 June 2026 severe storms struck the News Talk 103.7 listening area from the west. Within minutes area fire and EMS units would be all but overwhelmed with 911 calls for trees and powerlines down. Power outages were also experienced.
In the Hagerstown / Washington county area computer call boards in stations throughout the city and county were filled , “challenging” Washington County Fire & Rescue dispatchers to keep up with alerting the various fire companies of emergencies. The situation became so overwhelming that most stations assigned a member to monitor the call board and start his or her units in the direction of the incident even before being dispatched. A veteran of the fire and EMS system in the area told News Talk 103.7 FM that “such situations are rare but yesterday evening’s storms and how the fallout was handled, is something fire and EMS workers train for “.
Units in the Chambersburg area handled an unprecedented number of calls within very short time frames. The Franklin Fire Company of Chambersburg reported handling some 14 storm-related calls within just the first hour of the storm. The story was much the same in Washington County where the Longmeadow Fire Company on Hagerstown’s north side reported handling 25 calls including 3 structure fires which they assisted the City of Hagerstown Fire Department on…