Coast Guard oil spill drill reveals valuable lessons

By Laura Robertson

On June 10, an imaginary fishing vessel was approaching the Port of Nome when its engine caught fire.
The ship crashed into the rocks with 18 people, 150,000 gallons of fuel oil, and 60,000 pounds of frozen fish onboard. 
This was the drill scenario members of the U.S. Coast Guard, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Alaska Chadux Network, and Nome community were responding to last week. 
From the command center, set up in the Mini Convention Center, they worked through the scenario and coordinated response to the hypothetical shipwreck. Outside, on a rainy and windy Tuesday, Chadux deployed oil boom equipment across the Snake River near the bridge. 
At the end of the event, on Wednesday, there was a “hot wash,” an informal debriefing after the drill where participants and the public got a chance to speak on how the exercise went. Local reactions were mostly positive.
“This demonstrated to me that it can be done,” said Charlie Lean, who served as the Incident Commander on behalf of the City of Nome, along with Tom Vaden.
Hunter Bellamy of the Nome Volunteer Fire Department called it “mildly frustrating” that preemptive questions got delayed for the sake of the scenario, but overall said it was a great exercise. He praised how dynamic the exercise had been as well as the level of communication. 
“I really appreciated that we didn’t get brushed off when stuff got brought up just because we’re the little local guys,” Bellamy said. 
The Coast Guard coordinated the planning virtually via Microsoft Teams and communicated with people and agencies across the state. The software was praised by both Lean and Shawn Hay, the USGC Arctic Coordinator. 
There was also extensive weather modeling run by Jason Laney of the National Weather Service. He was able to report the existing weather in real time and invented an overnight storm which would have complicated things. He could model where the oil would spread so the Coast Guard could more effectively contain it. 
There were challenges, however. 
The Coast Guard chose to set up the command center of the drill at the spacious Mini Convention Center as the Emergency Operations Center in the Public Safety building wouldn’t have been big enough for all those people. To deal with the lack of internet at the Mini, the Coast Guard brought a large Starlink unit, but it “didn’t want to work with us over there,” said Hay. 
To share information, they hung up giant dry-erase forms around the Mini and communicated in regular debriefings. The last day, they used a mini Starlink which Alaska Chadux had brought. 
“That was enough to get us connectivity and work through some of the incident management software we were looking to showcase,” said Hay. 
There was also planned aerial footage and live streaming, but the drones couldn’t fly due to the windy and stormy weather. 
While the scenario had the ship run aground outside the port entrance, the boom was deployed in the Snake River. The location was “as realistic as possible without disrupting anything” in the harbor, said Hay. 
Harbormaster Lucas Stotts added that the real weather conditions of that day would have made deploying an oil boom close to the ship difficult. “Being up against the rocks is almost a worst-case scenario,” said Stotts. It was a stormy day. It would be hard to attach the boom to the rocks because there are no clear attach points and because the water would be going up and down in five-foot waves. 
“Even if you were to bolt like into it, the boom would be going up and down on rocks and getting caught. The water would just wash right through,” said Stotts. “So, you wouldn’t really be able to do much booming unless you got the boat away from the shore.” 
Stotts said in the actual situation, they probably would have put a boom where they did and created multiple layers of boom in the harbor to prevent oil from getting into the river and the coastline or oiling the boats. They might put up big circles of boom to collect what was in it and then circle the boat when it was calm and trying to stop the leak. 
The delayed preemptive questions revolved around ammonia. 
On the second day, there was supposed to be an ammonia leak which would throw a wrench in the response. In the theoretical situation, the ammonia had been acting as a refrigerant for the fish, Hay explained. When there was a fire onboard, ammonia systems had locked, containing the ammonia. Once the fire was out, those systems unlocked, and a ruptured pipe let the ammonia escape. 
The ammonia was supposed to be an added complication to the developing situation. But Lean, who had worked in a cannery when he was younger, had predicted it on the first day. He had asked questions about the ammonia which weren’t answered for the sake of the scenario. He became increasingly frustrated. 
“Oh my god, that’s instantaneous death. I mean, that’s really scary. I watched people have lifetime injuries in a matter of minutes,” said Lean. “I kind of told the operations staff, that’s unacceptable to me. The ammonia leak was more life threatening than the oil spill.”
Lean explained that in the theoretical situation, some men had stayed on the vessel. But if it had been real and there had really been ammonia on that ship, he would have demanded they all evacuated it immediately and would not have gone to save anyone who had refused to get off the ship. “I wouldn’t have the authority to actually force them [to evacuate], but I can tell them that I’m not risking my staff for your obstinance.” 
“Charlie [Lean], literally during the initial scenario briefing and understanding the problem, was like, what are we doing about the ammonia,” said Hay. “We were talking afterwards like, man, Charlie’s already hitting the answers for the problem we haven’t introduced yet.” 
The Coast Guard reached out to organizations across the state as part of the drill. 
“I reached out to the Eskimo Walrus Commission and the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission to inform them, like, ‘Hey this is an exercise, but you know, we would be making notifications to you for awareness and any additional consultation,” said Hay. 
He also reached out to the director of border patrol in Alaska. In the theoretical scenario, two Panamanian citizens were to be rescued from the vessel, and they asked how they would theoretically move them through the system. The Coast Guard made additional calls to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to work on an environmental plan. 
There was also a plan to reach out to Russia, first for awareness and again should the oil continue to spread. The Coast Guard and the Russian Border Patrol have a joint contingency plan for these situations, said Hay. 
Throughout the drill, Emily Vandenberg with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation worked on a start-up wildlife response plan for things like hazing and deterrence, carcass collection, and permitting. Not all the forms were completed during the two-day drill, she said, explaining that she didn’t have all the expertise to finish. 
In the hot wash, Vandenberg said she had gotten a lot of good local feedback and expertise, but she wished there had been clearer objectives—for example, having a wildlife plan or a waste plan by the end of the drill. 
Vandenberg was the only one working on those tasks in person, but there was virtual participation from the state’s Fish and Game and Dept. of Natural Resources as well as the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and the Dept. of Interior. She said it would be great to get NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service next time, but she wasn’t able to get feedback from them. 
If the scenario had be real, Vandenberg told the Nugget, “We would hope that a lot of folks would drop everything and be here in person.” 
There was one significant difference between the drill and what would likely happen in reality. 
“When you think about this scenario, the City of Nome and our Incident Command structure will have likely been operating for 24 to 48 hours before anyone has arrived here,” said Megan Onders, Nome’s Assistant City Manager, during the hot wash. She added that, in all likelihood, she would have been the one doing the initial press conference, not the Coast Guard. 
Onders emphasized the importance of communicating with local people and of knowing and using local place names in communications. 
Harbormaster Stotts might have been the one doing the booming. He said that the drill was “great training for incident command structure” but that the drill was ultimately the Coast Guard practicing their area response plan. He observed the booming but didn’t get hands on practice. 
Stotts was briefly assigned to be the Incident Commander. “But I just said, ‘Hey, if we’re going to be practicing like it really would be, I would not be IC. I would be getting out in a boat and helping with whatever is going on, whether its stringing boom or getting people off a boat or coordinating all that,” said Stotts. 
Despite that difference, Nomeites said the drill was a great learning experience.
“This thing was so dynamic, and we got to really look at how many different ways we’re going to have to be involved,” said Bellamy during the hot wash. “Like we talked about, 24, 48 hours, it’s just gonna be us for a while. And to be able to talk through all that in semi-real time as an evolving incident was really, really great.”