Incident Report Subject: US Coast Guard Report puts Deep Water Horizon Record Straight Date of Email report: Tue 06/09/2011 Report Detail:
The annual meeting of the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force, held in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 24, particularly focused on the ISPR findings. U.S. Coast Guard Reserve Rear Admiral (retired) Carlton Moore, vice chairman of the ISPR team, told the task force that, despite many public perceptions to the contrary, the organization responding to Deepwater Horizon operated effectively. The ISPR report, published in January, reinforces this point, saying that the Coast Guard and BP, the party responsible for the spill, had worked together cooperatively to deal with the disaster. “Media reports often left viewers with the impression that the Coast Guard and the responsible party were at odds periodically during the response,” the report says. “To the contrary, the (ISPR) team observed that personnel provided by the responsible party and Coast Guard personnel worked effectively together, and that there was ‘unity of effort’ throughout the response organization. ” However, the response organization was ill equipped to address the political fallout from the response, as day after day people around the country watched television images of oil and gas gushing from the seafloor of the Gulf, Moore said. “There was a huge public perception, accurate or not, that we were not able to effectively respond,” he said. Additional Documentation: |
