Rescuing the Environment

The San Francisco Bay oil spill points to a new realm of responsibility for the fire service

Most of us in the rescue community take pride in the fact that during challenging technical rescues, we put service before self when it comes to saving a life.

Over the last decade, the definition and training for rescues have expanded beyond humans to animals and pet rescues. Hurricane Katrina pushed that envelope to the breaking point, and today there’s legislation on the books that addresses the rescue of people and pets. Hurricane Katrina also instigated a change in the way the federal government classifies rescues related to water and urban and rural environments.

On the cutting edge of that change has been the United States Coast Guard (USCG), which, based upon its performance during Katrina, became the darling of D.C. With helmet and boom cameras, the USCG was able to show that it had the right stuff when it came to Katrina—and it has a lot to be proud of.

But the line between hero and zero is very fine—something the fire service itself discovered after 9/11. The general public has an attention span of about 5 minutes and as they say, the higher you go, the further you have to fall.

The USCG recently found that out, as it took a beating in the media for its handling of an oil spill in the beautiful and fragile San Francisco Bay. The agency’s experience should be a reminder for all of us that there’s a new public expectation for emergency responders: When needed, we must quickly, efficiently and adequately rescue the environment.

And this expectation is not limited to environmental disasters. Gone are the days of taking out the booster line to wash fuel spilled during an auto accident off the roadway and into a storm drain. As the general public increasingly “goes green” when it comes to energy efficiency and environmental issues, we all better rethink our response to daily incidents, as well as our ability to assist in environmental cleanups.

The Bay Spill
The 900' container ship Cosco Busan struck the Delta Support Tower of the Bay Bridge, which crosses between San Francisco and Oakland, leaving a 90' gash in the ship and ripping off 45 tons of protective bumper plastic around the tower. But it did more than damage the ship and tower; it dumped 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into the scenic San Francisco Bay.

The exact details of what occurred in the early morning hours of Nov. 7, as an all-Chinese crew and a Bay Pilot attempted to navigate the ship in heavy fog around the bridge, have yet to be fully explained. Similar questions regarding the USCG’s response are also being explored.

Not helping that debate is the fact that the San Francisco Fire Department was first made aware of the incident almost an hour after it occurred and then, depending on who you believe, was cancelled by the USCG as it was about to respond with a full first-alarm assignment and its fire boat to check out the damage to the bridge and the vessel. (The actual dispatch tape can be heard at www.SFGate.com under the title Oil Spill Communications.)

It took almost 8 hours after the incident was reported to modify the scale of the spill, which was initially estimated at 140 gallons, to the actual 58,000 gallons. The fall-out? A highly visible environmental disaster, the retirement of ranking USCG commander William Uberti, Congressional hearings, a full investigation around the response and almost $100 million in clean-up costs.

Underprepared?
In defense of the USCG, in March 2007 the agency disbanded its department that helped set up oil-spill response exercises and reassigned those individuals to Homeland Security details. How soon we forget the lessons of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, which dumped 10.8 million gallons of oil into Prince Williams Sound in Alaska.

My department is a water-rescue responder to San Francisco Bay, and we’ve felt the impact of those additional Homeland Security responsibilities on the USCG. As a community, we have lost some of the USCG’s support of our local water-rescue response, planning and coordination.

Whatever the outcome of the November incident, it provides an immediate lesson for all of us in the rescue community: We must create protocols and plans for dealing with environmental issues or “rescues.” The fire service may not be the most logical or primary agency for many of these types of emergencies, but more than likely we will be contacted, looked to and even expected to assist in situational awareness, command and control, planning, logistics and other vital functions of these incidents.

What Green Means
“Going green” may mean more than issues related to solar roofing panels, hybrid response vehicles and an agency’s ability to be energy efficient. It may mean opening another chapter in our book of potential rescues and expanding our list of agencies to coordinate and train with.

Harold Schapelhouman is a 26-year veteran firefighter with the Menlo Park (Calif.) Fire Protection District. At the start of 2007, he became the first internally selected fire chief in 21 years for his organization. Previously, he was the division chief in charge of special operations, which includes all district specialized preparedness efforts, the local and state water rescue program, and the local, state and national Urban Search and Rescue Program (USAR). Schapelhouman was the task force leader in charge of California Task Force 3, one of the eight California USAR teams and one of the 28 federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS/FEMA) teams.