THE TACTICS MEETING

What is the Jones Act—and why does this century-old maritime law still matter?

Dan Smiley is joined by Sarah Fryer, Director of Government Affairs at Centerline Logistics, and Mark Curtis, Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs and Resilience at Fairwater. Together, they explain the Jones Act’s origins, the requirements for transporting cargo between U.S. ports, and the important distinction between U.S.-flagged and Jones Act-qualified vessels.

The conversation examines how temporary waivers have supported genuine emergencies such as hurricanes and the Colonial Pipeline shutdown—and why the broad fuel waiver in effect at the time of recording has raised concerns throughout the domestic maritime industry. The guests discuss its effects on American mariners, vessel operators, shipbuilding investment, fuel transportation, and national security.

They also make the case for returning to narrowly tailored, short-duration waivers that are used only when qualified American vessels are unavailable. 

Plus, save the date for the Washington State Maritime Cooperative’s 2026 Preparedness Conference, October 21–22 at the Silver Cloud Hotel at Point Ruston in Tacoma.

Maritime emergencies are unlike any other incident that local fire, EMS, and law enforcement agencies will face. Ships have their own command structure, specialized crews, unique hazards, and response resources that most first responders rarely encounter—until the day everything goes wrong.

In this episode of The Tactics Meeting, Dan Smiley is joined by Brian O’Neill and Peter Montella, co-authors of Maritime Emergencies: A Complete Guide for Land-Based First Responders. Together they discuss why traditional emergency response doesn’t always translate to the waterfront and how agencies can better prepare before the next ship fire, hazardous materials incident, or port emergency.

Topics include:

• Why ship fires require a different response strategy
• Unified Command and the role of the vessel’s master
• The importance of Qualified Individuals (QIs) and Salvage and Marine Firefighting (SMFF) teams
• Electric vehicle fires aboard car carriers
• Port and vessel familiarization for first responders
• Common mistakes that can make a maritime incident worse
• Practical steps local agencies can take to improve preparedness today

Whether you’re a firefighter, emergency manager, law enforcement officer, Coast Guard member, port professional, or simply interested in maritime response, this episode provides valuable insights from two nationally recognized experts who have trained thousands of first responders across the United States.

Guest: Brian O’Neill & Peter Montella
Book: Maritime Emergencies: A Complete Guide for Land-Based First Responders

For more episodes, training opportunities, and emergency management resources, visit https://terminus.us.

In this episode of The Tactics Meeting, Dan Smiley convenes an expert panel to explore the evolving role of the Safety Officer in complex emergency responses. Drawing on lessons from maritime incidents, accident investigations, and even Charles Darwin’s concept of adaptability, the discussion examines how safety culture is built in real time within Unified Command. Panelists share insights from salvage operations, incident management training, and transportation safety investigations to highlight why adaptability, communication, and learning from past mistakes are essential to keeping responders safe. The conversation also explores how emerging tools like AI could help bridge the gap between written plans and real-world operations in the field.

In this episode of The Tactics Meeting, Dan sits down with Patrick Gallagher, Executive Director of the Marine Exchange of Puget Sound, for a practical conversation about what “response readiness” actually looks like in the Pacific Northwest—when the weather’s bad, systems fail, and you still have to keep the region moving.

They dig into the Marine Exchange’s behind-the-scenes role supporting WSMC’s 24/7 watch, the value of resilient AIS coverage, and how the Marine Exchange has even backed up the Coast Guard’s Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) when federal systems stumble. Along the way, they talk continuity planning (generators, fuel, cloud redundancy), the reality that help may not arrive quickly in a Cascadia-scale event, and what preparedness looks like when you’re building it with limited resources.

Topics include:

• Continuity of operations for maritime response and vessel traffic oversight

• AIS as an operational backbone (and why redundancy matters)

• Coordinating notifications, early incident intelligence, and on-call incident command

• Shipboard fire readiness, Unified Command, and hard lessons learned

• Communications resilience (including radio) and emerging hazards like lithium-ion battery fires

 

In this episode, Dan sits down with Mark Curtis—Senior Director of Safety Programs and DPA at Fairwater, and board president of the Washington State Maritime Cooperative—for a deep dive into the planning section.

They work through what makes the planning section chief role the hardest job in the incident command post. Dan explains why the documentation unit leader is always his first hire, why an incident action plan without unified command signatures is "just waste paper," and how responder immunity depends on getting those signatures in place.

The conversation covers the realities of hybrid command posts, why "digital first" isn't optional anymore, the emerging threat of ship fires and lithium-ion batteries, and the massive stack of plans required on a single vessel. They also touch on the next generation of emergency responders coming out of maritime academies and what the industry needs to do to stay ahead of incidents we haven't trained for yet.

Plus: meeting owl troubleshooting, privateering, and the case for bringing cannons back.

In this episode of The Tactics Meeting, we take a hard, honest look at how drills and exercises are designed—and why doing them the same way we have for the last 20 years may no longer be serving responders, organizations, or the public.

Joined by an experienced panel—Liesl Peterson, Agneta Dahl, Mark Curtis, and Suzanne Lagoni—we dig into the uncomfortable reality that many exercises have become repetitive, predictable, and overly focused on checking boxes rather than building real capability.

The conversation explores what we may be getting wrong, what we’re failing to test, and how “successful” exercises can still leave responders underprepared for the complexity, ambiguity, and pressure of real incidents. We talk about breaking out of familiar scenarios, embracing friction and failure in a controlled way, and designing exercises that actually stretch decision-making, leadership, and coordination.

If you’ve ever walked out of a drill thinking “we’ve done this before”, this episode is a challenge to rethink why we exercise—and how we can do it better.

In this episode, we step back from the headlines to look at what ship fires keep teaching us—again and again. We talk through the realities of marine firefighting response, how communities can track air quality during smoke events, and why “general average” can suddenly matter a lot when cargo is lost. We also preview regional efforts to sharpen preparedness, including upcoming work through harbor safety partners and new coordination initiatives along the Columbia River.

In this episode of The Tactics Meeting, Dan Smiley gathers a roundtable of experts to tackle the invisible but growing threat to the maritime industry: Cyber Security. We are joined by first-time guest Charles Grau from Fairwater, who brings his background in aerospace and the to the table. Together with regulars Jim Butler, Mark Curtis, and Theo Camlin, the panel discusses why the biggest threat to a vessel might not be the sea itself, but the vendor walking up the gangway with a thumb drive.

From the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack to GPS spoofing in the Red Sea, we explore how the threat landscape is shifting from traditional oil spills to cargo fires and digital intrusions. The group also debates the challenges of connectivity during an incident—balancing the security of VPNs and firewalls against the need for real-time information sharing via tools like Starlink.

In this episode, we cover:

• Aerospace vs. Maritime: Charles compares high-regulation aviation security to the current state of shipping.
• The Human Firewall: Why well-trained crew members are your best defense against phishing and social engineering.
• IT vs. OT: Understanding the difference between Information Technology and the Operational Technology that actually drives the ship.
• Response Reality: Mark shares a story about training responders on software during an active ship fire in the North Sea.
• The "Sticky Card" Problem: Navigating the digital divide when different agencies can’t use the same software.

Save the Dates:

• March 24-25, 2025: National Harbor Safety Conference in Seattle, WA.
• October 21-22, 2026: Washington State Maritime Cooperative Planning Conference in Tacoma, WA.

Sponsors: This episode is brought to you by Gallagher Marine Systems (GMS) and the Washington State Maritime Cooperative (WSMC).

Vessels of Opportunity were never meant to be dedicated assets. They’re a planning concept—local vessels identified for possible use, evaluated and activated only if and when they’re actually needed. In this episode of The Tactics Meeting, we’re joined by Vince Mitchell, Incident Commander for the Washington State Maritime Cooperative, to examine what happens when that planning concept starts being regulated as if it were a standing, pre-certified response resource.

 

We dig into the growing disconnect between field-level response reality and federal policy, including attempts to impose inspection, certification, and readiness standards on vessels that were never intended to operate that way. This conversation gets into the operational consequences—slower activation, reduced participation, higher costs, and diminished surge capacity—as well as the broader implications for Unified Command authority and real-world response effectiveness.

This is a candid discussion about flexibility versus control, planning versus regulation, and what’s at risk when policy drifts away from how response actually works.

In this short preview episode of The Tactics Meeting, host Dan Smiley sits down with Tom Wiker, President of Gallagher Marine Systems, to talk about his upcoming presentation at the WSMC Member Preparedness Conference on October 23 in Tacoma, Washington.

Gallagher Marine Systems serves as the backup Spill Management Team for WSMC, providing vital planning and response support when it matters most. In this conversation, Tom offers a behind-the-scenes look at what Gallagher brings to the table and what attendees can expect to learn at the conference.

Whether you’re a current WSMC member or just exploring options, this episode is your invitation to join the region’s top maritime responders for a day of collaboration, insight, and preparedness.