First responders across the D.C. area were honored yesterday (Wednesday) for their actions in the aftermath of the fatal aircraft collision over the Potomac River.
Among the agencies saluted were the Arlington County Police Department, the Arlington County Fire Department, and Arlington Public Safety Communications and Emergency Management.
The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) also recognized the decades-long regional cooperation that led to a coordinated response to the Jan. 29 tragedy.
“This is the personification … of what we have in regionalism,” Rodney Lusk, a Fairfax County supervisor who heads COG, said at the regional body’s March 12 meeting.
That response was “nothing short of what I could consider extraordinary,” said Pamela Smith, chief of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department. She said efforts took place “swiftly, effectively and as one unified region.”
More than 300 first responders from 90 regional agencies were directly or indirectly involved in the response.
“This is a coalition of the willing — a very tight coalition,” said Scott Boggs, managing director of COG’s Department of Homeland Security and Public Safety.
A total of 67 people died when a U.S. Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines jet as it was preparing to land at Reagan National Airport. The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation is ongoing.
At the March 12 meeting, speakers noted that another air disaster — the January 1982 crash of an Air Florida jet into the Potomac after departure from National — helped spur more collaborative regional coordination.
Like the 9/11 terrorist attack at the Pentagon, the January 2025 crash tested those relationships.
“This is why we plan, we exercise. If we didn’t do this every day … our response would have been very different,” said John Donnelly, chief of the DC Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services.
“There was no hesitation” among regional jurisdictions in rendering support, said Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz.
“The level of collaboration and cooperation doesn’t happen by accident,” Schwartz said, pointing to ongoing communication and training.
Those who took part in recovery efforts will need ongoing mental-health supports, Schwartz and a number of other participants said.
“It was an incident that affected all of us,” Donnelly said. “These incidents take a toll on all the responders.”
“It sometimes can feel like the public has plain old moved on,” Schwartz said. But for those at the scene, the impact “goes on for months and years after the event.”
“Support for those who respond is critical,” he said.
