A method and apparatus are provided for controlling network access in a wireless communication system. An infrastructure device, which may reside in, or be communicatively coupled to, any of an access network, a core network, and a service network, implements a device class prioritization control function (DCP-CF) that receives a geographical location of an incident, determines one or more of a cell and an access node corresponding to the geographical location, determines one or more access class barring parameters for the cell and/or access node, determines whether to enable access class barring at the cell and/or access node and, in response to determining to enable access class barring at the cell and/or access node, provides the one or more access class barring parameters to the cell and/or access node.