Battalion Fire Chief James Richardson joined RPH Life safety Consultants, LLC in January 2026.

Battalion Fire Chief James Richardson is an experienced incident commander, grant writer, planner and emergency management specialist who works at the local, state, and the federal government levels to ensure that communities understand and address their vulnerabilities to hazards and the associated risks to the communities’ physical, social, and economic wellbeing before and after a disaster. He has participated in number hazard mitigation planning and emergency operations planning efforts at the municipality level.

He has experience facilitating collaboration with government and non-governmental stakeholders to establish and achieve common goals related to building capacity to mitigate risks, respond to hazard events, and to recover from disasters. Additionally, Mr. Richardson leverages his extensive planning and project management expertise to support his clients’ in reaching their desired end states.

Chief Richardson currently serves as the Chief Executive of the Twin State Fire Regional Hazardous Materials Team working jointly with the State of Vermont Hazardous Materials Team as cross border collabortives.

Between 2020-2022 Mr. Richardson as served as the project manager in response to the Covid 19 pandemic for twenty-two cities and towns in Northern New Hampshire leading the regional public health response efforts as a contractor.

Chief Richardson has managed and supported numerous projects related to disaster response, disaster recovery, resiliency and adaptation, and disaster preparedness to build communities’ capacity before a disaster to become more resilient to the impacts of hazards, to protect lives and property during a disaster, and to ensure communities can recover to a new economic and community stability after a disaster.

As a Battalion Fire Chief, he has led emergency responders as an Incident Commander for the Town of Derry New Hampshire and participated in several committees to include assisting in the development and operations of the Southern New Hampshire Hazardous Materials Response Team as the Operations Chief.

Chief Richardson served as the school safety and security supervisor for the New Hampshire Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management overseeing staff assigned to provide on-site assessments of all public schools and to assist in the application of grant funding, as well as leading several Emergency Operations Plan workshops and exercises.

As an educator Chief Richardson has provided Incident Command System training for municipal officials including public safety, education, and elected and appointed officials.