Photo by steven and darusha
Jeff Charlton of 911team.org in London asked a interesting maritime question on the IAEM list-serve the other day that Robin Storm thought we could answer.
Jeff’s question?
“What if the need arises to replace a master or pilot because the ship has been affected by plague, terrorism, CBRn incident? How many have the competence or training to work in level A or B PPE (personal protection equipment)?
How many crew could assist him if a vessel was out of control? What if a ship was utilized as a terrorist vector agent and required mobility rather than destruction?”
So here is the response by John Denham a former SF Bay Pilot.
First, who will be in charge. The COSCO BUSAN incident is a current example of the lack of a single responsible agent with authority to mobilize, coordinate, and direct a catastrophic event recovery operation in the San Francisco Bay area. The closest single authority to my knowledge is the Bay Area Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) Yours truly a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee. As a state ( next level of responsible government) agency , BCDC has the civic and political sub-structure ( members from all contiguous communities) to organize, coordinate and direct what ever exists to respond, but lacks any experience. 9/11 experienced a similar problem to a lesser degree as only New York city was involved. Leadership is the critical survival element.
Second: Consider a nuclear weapons attack with CB fallout-out directed on the city of San Francisco. Without details consider San Francisco and the immediate 15 mile area is devastated. In such a scenario the leadership would probably come from out of the area. Sacramento would probably respond, and in so doing would call for federal assistance; that politically implies we can handle it but need help The federal government will probably respond with support, i.e. we will take charge and fix things as we see fit. And that may be worse than the bomb.
I have an ID card identifying me as a Department of Defense employee and shipyard pilot at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard. I have no idea what program that was and I have no idea what I was to do; I left that job in 1981. But under the Civilian Defense organization, at one time there was a plan for identifying and organizing critical persons.
Some one (authority), will eventually make a decision that vessels must be moved, for some reason. Some to depart, some to arrive. Some just to be moved from A to B. The bay waters to my knowledge will be basically unaffected by the destruction and bad effects of man’s attempt to resolve a problem with explosives. Therefore it is considered safe to move about on the water if there are no navigation restrictions e.g., bridges blocking passages .
