{"id":8427,"date":"2013-12-11T15:50:48","date_gmt":"2013-12-11T20:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8427"},"modified":"2016-02-15T22:39:52","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T03:39:52","slug":"boston-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8427","title":{"rendered":"Boston hero"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Boston_JOC\"<\/a>
Lt. Col. Yasenchock (far right) in the JOC during the Boston bombings. Photo (c) 65th Public Affairs Operation Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When US Army Reserve Lt. Col. David Yasenchock \u201989<\/strong> finished a year of active duty in Afghanistan in November 2012, and accepted an appointment as the Massachusetts\u2019 State Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer, he thought the worst situation he might face would be a hurricane or a power outage.<\/p>\n

But when two bombs exploded during the running of the Boston Marathon last April, it was Yasenchock who was called in to help coordinate the combined response efforts of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Massachusetts National Guard, the FBI, and several state and civil authorities.<\/p>\n

Two hours after the explosions, Yasenchock was in the Joint Operations Center (JOC) at Hanscom Air Force Base. As authorities sought to restore order and searched for those responsible for the terrorist act, it was Yasenchock\u2019s job to ensure that all federal DoD personnel and resources\u2014from bomb-sniffing dogs, to bomb technicians, to Military Police\u2014were equipped and ready to go wherever and whenever needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to be very attuned to what we could and couldn\u2019t do because there are laws\u2014the Posse Comitatus Act and the Stafford Act\u2014that stipulate US Armed Forces can\u2019t be used for law enforcement purposes,\u201d Yasenchock said. \u201cWe had to be sure that any DoD forces were used to assist<\/em> the National Guard, and to assist<\/em> the FBI and other responders during the operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yasenchock is no stranger to combat or to tense situations. Because of his technical skills and security clearance, he was assigned to the Pentagon War Room in 2003 as the US prepared to go to war with Iraq. He later served near Sadr City, where he helped the Iraqi military rebuild its academy. \u201cIt was a bad area and we got attacked a lot,\u201d the Rochester, NH, resident said.<\/p>\n

Despite that experience, the Boston bombings were \u201cdifficult to deal with\u201d because \u201cthis was my own backyard.\u201d He said the hardest part was dealing with the \u201cwhat-ifs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if this escalates? What if bombs start going off in other cities? What\u2019s available? How are we going to react? We had to build contingency plans based on those scenarios,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Yasenchock was in the JOC when bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was apprehended, and he described the mood in the room at that moment as one of relief. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like Hollywood, where you see everyone cheering. Most of us in that room were in some way combat veterans, and we understood that the situation could have gotten really bad. So there was just a collective sigh of relief.\u201d Twenty-four hours later, he stood down.<\/p>\n

Yasenchock, who serves in the Signal Corps, works full time as the chief information officer for the Rochester school system. In October, he received his PhD in computer and information security from Northcentral University. He said his bachelor\u2019s degree in engineering from TCNJ prepared him well for his professional and military careers. And he credits one of his former engineering professors, Joseph Flynn<\/strong>, with imparting on him a key piece of advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018When you get commissioned, don\u2019t go in the infantry and don\u2019t go into the artillery. You\u2019re a smart guy. Use your engineering degree.\u2019 And I have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When two bombs exploded during the running of the Boston Marathon last April, David Yasenchock \u201989, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve, was called in to coordinate the federal government’s response. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-winter-2013"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}