THE TACTICS MEETING

In this 18th episode of The Tactics Meeting, Dr. Ed Owens guides us through setting up a shoreline cleanup program and the role of SCAT.  

Should we exercise Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) during exercises? Can NRDA be separated from other response tasks?  Join me and my guest Greg Challenger, President, and Marine Scientist at Polaris Applied Sciences, Inc., as we explore the NRDA process, its interconnectedness to all things environmental, and the appropriate time to activate an RP NRDA Liaison. 

Messaging is critical to the success of a response. So how do We get it right? The news cycle used to be 12 hours, and we could plan on putting out information at a press conference. Now the news cycle is five minutes or less, so when do we activate the PIO? What information can they put out without UC approval? What do we say when asked about spill volume, dispersants, and wildlife? These are har...

Wildlife response during an oil spill is critical but often misunderstood.  We see pictures of volunteers with soap and brushes cleaning oil from birds. But that cleaning is just a tiny part of the overall response to wildlife impacted by oil. How do you house an adult beaver that has evolved to chew through anything? How will Orca, seals, and other marine mammals be affected? In this episode of T...

Todd Duke shares his experience with marine salvage from U.S. Navy damage control to shipboard firefighting. We discuss the history of salvage, salvage contracts, and the challenges of conducting salvage from within the Incident Command System.

In this episode of The Tactics Meeting, Robert Starkes shares the mission of Eastern Canada Response Corporation with its vast geographic area of responsibility stretching from western Alberta to the Atlantic coast. When I think of ECRC, I think of oil spill response in the maritime environment, but the reality encompasses so much more. With clients that comprise pipelines, rail, facilities, shipp...

In Episode 12, we go on a virtual tour of the Environmental Unit with Dr. Elliott Taylor from Polaris Applied Sciences. Elliott and I talk about EU staffing, net environmental benefit, alternative response strategies, trajectory forecasting, and much more. A must-hear episode of The Tactics Meeting!

In this episode of the Tactics Meeting, Randy Ashmore explains the certified emergency manager certification program offered by the International Association of Emergency Managers.

How does trajectory modeling work? For 45 years, Dr. Jerry Galt has worked on the problem of forecasting how spilled oil will travel in the ocean.  Starting with a PDP8 computer and then an Apple II, Dr. Galt developed focusing models that eventually became GNOME. 

In This episode of The Tactics meeting, Al Allen explains how he went from a physics career to oil spill response to in-situ burning during Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon. Al is the author of Clues Can Light The Way.

Genwest's John Murphy, Brianna Yearwood, Al Hielscher, and Lexter Tapawan introduce online resource tracking with WRRLTracWeb.

In This episode of The Tactics meeting Scott Knutson (USCG Ret) and Sonja Larson (Washington Department of Ecology) to tell the story of the birth of the Western Response Resource List. The story takes us from the Nestucca oil spill, Exxon Valdez, OPA-90, Deepwater Horizon, and finally to the International Maritime Organization and International Offers of Assistance.

Tony Parkin joins Island Oil Spill Association as Executive Director, steering rebirth of 30-year-old volunteer organization.

Western Canada Marine Response Corporation (WCMRC) is the certified Marine Spill Response Organization in British Columbia, Canada. In this episode of The Tactics Meeting, Michael Lowry and I discuss WCMRC's equipment expansion, Incident Management Team responsibilities, responder immunity, coastal mapping, and dispersant application. You can check out their website at http://wcmrc.com.

Send a clear message to your community during a response with guest Suzanne Lagoni.

Loss of power, dwindling supplies, and lack of staff, Guest Liesl Peterson shares her experience as a hospital emergency manager.

Using drones to gather tactical data, direct responders, and update the Common Operating Picture has become all the rage. In this episode of The Tactics Meeting, we are joined by drone pilot Dave Sawicki and GIS expert Larry Ryan to look at some of the legal and practical issues involved in leveraging this technology.

The Tactics Meeting podcast is designed for emergency responders and other IMT members. In this episode, Larry Ryan shares how he got into GIS and manages and shares a Common operating picture.