We have good relations with the military and do a lot of coordination with them because they control so much of the land. We have no problem using their resources if we need them, and they are happy to help because the area has so many military veterans.
Local officials are not adverse to working in a coordinated fashion because hurricanes are rarely single county events. We follow the emergency plan even for tropical storms because it is good practice, and good way to discover problems in any of the systems.
So now this finely tuned, effective mechanism is trying to coordinate with something called the “Unified Command” and communications seem to be flowing one way with little or no feedback.
You don’t wait until the last minute to do things, you get what you need in advance and position it where you will need it. There is a plan, and that plan requires a certain amount of time to have things in place. You don’t depend on “just in time” delivery, you want it on hand and inventoried to verify that you have the resources you need and nothing has been forgotten.
It is obvious that the counties east of Escambia could have oil coming ashore at any time and things have to be coordinated locally with the military and the National Parks Service on the barrier island, as well as the inland side of the sound north of it. You have to know if the Feds are going to deploy booms, or other measures, so you don’t double up.
So far, the Panhandle counties have seen no concrete proof that the Unified Command actually knows what in hell it is doing. Where is the overall plan that counties can look at to tell them what the counties on either side are doing? Where is the coordination? All you get from UC is approval or disapproval of your plan, which might be altered if you knew what had been approved for neighboring counties. The coordination is taking place among the counties without any real assistance or guidance. That is not how things should be done.
]]>FIR Interview: Neil Chapman, BP, and Deepwater Horizon Response
There is quite a bit of useful information (along with the usual PR garbage) here:
Gulf Spill Unified Command Communications Powered by PIER
It should be noted that Pier Systems is now owned by O’Brien’s Response Management, part of a group of companies: The O’Brien’s Group, O’Brien Oil Pollution Services (OOPS),and Response Management Associates (RMA).
The major problem, it seems to me, is that it’s all to vague. On the surface, it seems that it’s a professional, well thought out group involved in managing the DH crisis. But with so few real details, we can’t determine the actual structure (who is in charge, who has the final say; who is repomsible for which components of the response; etc.), there are few details of any actual strategies and plans, etc. To my experienced eye, it does seem to be more about PR than any actual response to a real crisis. If it were real, why is there so much hidden, why is there not more transparency of details?
Too many questions, too few answers.
]]>Seems that Florida is definitely fed up with the so-called ‘Unified Command’ (a truly bogus PR title for what is really a very small and limited group of entities).
Panhandle officials upset with oil spill command structure
Officials want Panhandle counties to secede from BP’s unified command
You can tell how bogus the DHUC is by this interview when The Economist tried to find out exactly what and who the Unified Command is:
The website was created by PIER Systems, Inc. (hosted on GoDaddy I think). However, Pier do a lot of Gov/Industry sites of this type and are a common contractor, so that means nothing really. The Pier website does have some useful info about it however.
Continued…
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