THE TACTICS MEETING

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 The Tactics Meeting, Jenny Schlieps‌, and Chris Battaglia of Focus Wildlife take us on a journey to the wild kingdom.

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, shipping, and offshore production, ECRC is one of the most diverse response organizations in the world. 

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.