SPILL OF NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE EXERCISE 1997:TESTING A NEW ORGANIZATIONAL CONCEPT

摘要

Following the Valdez, Alaska, oil spill, the needfor an effective organization to manage a spill of suchmagnitude was readily apparent. The publication of arevised National Contingency Plan (NCP), reflected thisneed by defining a Spill of National Significance (SONS)as a spill that due to it severity, size, location, actual orpotential impact on the public health and welfare or theenvironment, or the necessary response effort is so complexthat it requires extraordinary coordination of federal, state,local and responsible party resources to contain and cleanup the discharge.The Coast Guard adopted the Incident CommandSystem as the response management organization for oiland hazardous substance incidents in 1996. An integralpart of ICS is the Area Command concept, which providesa level of strategic management and support for the existingFederal On Scene Coordinator (FOSC) responseorganization. This concept was evaluated for its suitabilityat a Spill of National Significance exercise held on 16-18September 1997 in Philadelphia, PA, and Washington, DC.The exercise was also designed to assess interagency policyand cooperation with regard to emergency response byhaving the participants deliberate on critical issues in acollegial setting as opposed to a stress elevating oil spillequipment deployment and command center organizationdrill. This paper will examine the makeup of the uniquedesign of the exercise and discuss several of the issues thatarose during the exercise.