In December 1988, Julie Black was working as the officer in charge of Command and Control at Dumfries and Galloway Fire Brigade's Headquarters in the town of Dumfries, Scotland. The command center is where all local 999 emergency calls are sent, where messages are reviewed, and where responses to incidents are overseen.

Julie's job was overseeing all of the command and control work, including as liaison with the commanders on the ground. There were 16 branches across the region, with the largest and full-time brigade located in Dumfries. The other 15 were remote stations, with on-call firefighters.

Julie begins her story by taking us back to her shift in the control room on December 21, 1988, when she received the first emergency call about an incident in Lockerbie.

When the first fire officers began arriving in Lockerbie, they knew something was terribly wrong. Julie recalls phoning the duty officer at the fire brigade, to alert him of the incident unfolding. The duty officer hung up the phone as he thought Julie was playing a prank on him, due to the almost unbelievable information she was providing regarding the number of fire engines present and the number of fatalities on the ground.

The information Julie was receiving from those on the ground in Lockerbie was indeed hard to believe. Yet Julie had years of training and was used to responding to horrific incidents like multiple road traffic collisions and fatal house fires. However, this was an emergency like no other.

As the incident unfolded, Julie was tasked with commandeering firefighters from all across the region. She eventually called for backup from as far away as Strathclyde in central Scotland, and Cumbria in northern England.

As the emergency services from across Scotland were alerted to the incident, Julie began receiving offers of help from almost every fire brigade in the country. They wanted to offer support in any way possible.

Dumfries and Galloway Fire Brigade had just taken delivery of a brand-new incident control unit, which had yet to be put through its paces. Being utilized for the response in Lockerbie was the ultimate test.

Despite the huge response and recovery effort in Lockerbie, Julie still had to ensure that there was sufficient cover to attend other fires across the region.

As firefighters returned from Lockerbie and arrived back at headquarters at Dumfries, they didn’t speak about anything they had witnessed.

Despite the horrific events unfolding 12 miles away and knowing just how critical the situation was, Julie remembers a sense of calm in the command center—even from those with the least amount of experience.

As the news began to break about the tragedy, the fire service started receiving calls from the world's reporters and news agencies looking for information. Julie recalls having a competition with her colleagues to see who would receive a call from the farthest away location.

It was a way for staff to distract themselves from the brutality of what they were dealing with, and it provided a little bit of light amongst the dark. 

In the days and weeks following the attack, there was a lot of confusion amongst people around how they should be acting or feeling. The attack happened just before Christmas- a time when many festive events were scheduled to take place.

For weeks before the attack, Julie and some of her colleagues had been preparing for a festive pantomime, with performances scheduled for January 1989. However, due to the attack, there was debate amongst the cast and crew over whether it should go ahead or not.

Julie was one of a few fire service personnel chosen to put together a specially commissioned presentation, incorporating all of the data, information and photos from the fire brigade.

It was a comprehensive piece of work, depicting the events that unfolded on the night of the attack and the weeks that followed.

The presentation was used as a basis for new training material that would be implemented in fire services up and down the country.

Before the events in Lockerbie, there were no protocols in place for responding to certain situations that had occurred on December 21, 1988.

Dumfries and Galloway is a large rural region, with the majority of call-outs responding to house fires and road collisions. To this day, Julie feels incredibly proud of the brigade’s response efforts in Lockerbie after the Pan Am 103 bombing.

The majority of firefighters were offered counseling, but Julie believes that very few attended the sessions. There was an understanding that the colleagues would speak to one another about what they had witnessed and endured, rather than a counselor.

Julie never asked any of the firefighters to speak about what they had witnessed. Until now, Julie hadn't spoken of her involvement in the night of the bombing.