By Paul Leighton
The Salem News
BEVERLY, Mass. — Mark Foster, who built the Beverly -based FEMA search-and-rescue team that responded to 9/11 and dozens of other emergencies, has died.
Foster’s death was announced Monday on the Massachusetts Task Force 1 Facebook page. He was 74.
“He literally built MA-TF1 from the ground up and we are forever grateful,” the Facebook post reads. “This was his second home for 30-plus years before his retirement last year. He was truly a pioneer in the US&R system. He will be greatly missed.”
Foster founded Massachusetts Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue Team, one of 28 FEMA search-and-rescue teams in the nation, in 1990. The task force was one of the first rescue teams to respond to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack in New York City.
The task force is based at a compound next to Beverly Airport. It consists of about 250 people from all six New England states, including firefighters, police officers, doctors, paramedics, canine handlers and engineers.
Foster, who grew up and lived in Beverly, retired last November.
In his book about 9/11, “The First Eight Days at Ground Zero,” Foster described a scene of “total chaos” when Task Force 1 arrived, with rescuers digging in the rubble of the collapsed towers with their bare hands.
“The 911 response is indelibly burned into the hearts and souls of all the members that responded as well as those team members who supported us at home,” Foster wrote in his book.
A small exhibit on the task force’s experience at Ground Zero is on permanent display at its compound in Beverly, as well as a memorial featuring a 21-foot-long piece of steel from one of the downed World Trade Center buildings.
In a story in The Salem News, longtime task force member Jim Hill said about Foster, “He’s why this place is even here. Everything around here just says Mark.”
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