I reiterate: In your list, 3-6 require the proper PPE, which may have been a day away.They require trained people, who may have been as far out. This is a small town along the rail line, and like hundreds, if not thousands of others, they are not ready for a major HAZMAT event, and cannot be ready for them all and keep the streets paved, too.
A lot of small-town fire chiefs. especially in areas where these chemicals are only a pass-through item, and not used nor generated nearby, simply don't deal with this sort of incident on a regular basis. Even in the middle of the oil patch here, a HAZMAT response to a town in a different part of the county will require a couple of hours to get someone with the highest levels of local training on scene. From there, the nearest team may be 8-12 hours out at best.
I'm talking about a rail related HAZMAT incident involving materials generally not produced nor used here (we're a major rail shipping corridor, too), not something as 'mundane' as an oil well fire. One such in Minot (a bigger town) years ago involved spillage, and one of my granddaughters suffered serious ill effects from that (which she has since, after two rounds of chemo, recovered from).
That leaves a guy who deals normally with car accidents and house fires in charge of a chemical spill with a class 2 health hazard in town with none of the resources common to an area where these chemicals are ordinarily handled, with an uncontrolled situation, establishing a perimeter and evacuating people, likely to the next town over. For all we know,he may have been told to light it off, or the Feds may have done it.
Concerning is the media blackout, including accounts of reporters being arrested (possibly for violating the perimeter to 'get the story' without realizing what they were facing in terms of materials or fire risk). That media blackout may conceal an inept or lackadasical response from the very people who were supposed to back up the locals in this case (IOW, Federal Level FUBAR).
Considering that local Fire Chiefs are usually just that, local, and that in volunteer departments are part and parcel of the community they serve, they will want to get this right and defer to people more expert, simply because they are one of the locals, too. No one wants to be 'that guy' who wrecked the town, and they are going to do everything to get it right because they live there, too.
What that indicates to me is that failures in this, be they in strategy or in execution, are more likely at the Federal level, no matter who ends up getting gigged with the blame.