Maritime Response: Search and Rescue

In his Commandant’s Direction to service members, issued in early 2011, Adm. Robert J. Papp Jr. reminded the Coast Guard: “Every member is a first responder” – a principle embodied in the service’s motto, Semper Paratus. The lead agency for maritime search and rescue, the Coast Guard coordinates the efforts of federal, state, and local responders, oversees communications networks to monitor distress calls, and, through its Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue system, partners with the world’s merchant fleet to rescue mariners around the globe.

The primary aim of the Coast Guard’s SAR mission is to minimize injury and loss of life, with a secondary aim of protecting property. It achieves these not only with on-scene operations, search planning, and distress monitoring and communication but also through prevention activities such as safety regulation, maritime governance, and training programs at its National Search and Rescue School. In FY 2011, the Coast Guard responded to 20,510 SAR cases, saving 3,785 lives and more than $82 million in property.

Among these operations was the daring night rescue of a pair of Marine Corps aviators whose F/A-18 Hornet went down in the Pacific 85 miles southwest of San Diego. When Sector San Diego picked up the Emergency Locator Transmitter signal at just after 10 p.m. on Aug. 10, 2011, it promptly directed nearby assets – a patrolling C-130 Hercules aircraft and the Coast Guard Cutter Edisto – to the coordinates. While Edisto crew members homed in on the sound of the airmen’s voices and signal whistles, the C-130 pinpointed the pilots’ location with onboard sensors and infrared cameras. Within a few hours of the initial report, the pilots were recovered by a Coast Guard rescue swimmer deployed from an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter and flown to the hospital, where they both recovered.

In recent years, as larger areas of the Arctic region have opened to maritime activity, the Coast Guard has been compelled to direct its attention to a region where very few of the service’s assets have been deployed, especially compared to Arctic nations such as Russia and Canada. On May 12, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed the historic Arctic Search and Rescue Agreement, laying the groundwork for collaborative response, when necessary, between all eight Arctic nations to a major SAR event. Under the agreement, each Arctic state is responsible for establishing, operating, and maintaining SAR capability within a specified Arctic area.

 

Maritime Response: Environmental Protection

The Coast Guard’s maritime response operations also mitigate pollution and damage to the marine environment. Its response and recovery resources, located in communities throughout the nation, are fully ready and scalable to coordinate with and support local, state, tribal, federal, and private-sector partners. In international incidents, such as the Haiti earthquake of early 2010, the service is capable of providing the same services in support of U.S. interests.

As with all its missions, the Coast Guard forms partnerships with stakeholders to maximize the effectiveness of its prevention and response programs – for example, in May 2011, it hosted the 2011 triennial International Oil Spill Conference, an event it has chaired since 1969 to bring together public and private stakeholders from all over the world. This year’s conference, the largest ever, hosted more than 2,100 attendees representing 41 different countries.

In the early weeks of 2011, the Coast Guard was compelled to form new partnerships in response to an unprecedented situation on the Columbia River. When its owner attempted to cut it apart for scrap, the Davy Crockett, a 431-foot World War II cargo barge, broke apart and sank at its Camas, Wash., mooring sometime in January. It soon became clear the Davy Crockett was leaking oil into the river.

Along with its bunker fuel, the barge was found to be leaking small amounts of highly toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. As the estimated cost of the cleanup escalated, the owner of the vessel essentially walked away, sticking taxpayers with a bill that reached $19.55 million by August.

The barge could not be refloated and towed to a shipyard, so the Coast Guard’s Pacific Northwest District, the 13th, received permission from Papp for authorization to remove and destroy it in place – something the Coast Guard had never done before. The Coast Guard and its partners – the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington State Department of Ecology, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, and other state, local, and tribal agencies – built a $1.4 million steel cofferdam around the vessel to prevent further spillage as the demolition took place. The final piece of the vessel was removed and cleaned on Aug. 25, capping a salvage effort that removed 32,000 gallons of oil and 800,000 pounds of debris.

The severity of the Davy Crockett case prompted the Coast Guard and its regional partners to consider ways to avoid a similar costly situation from another derelict vessel. Led by Sector Columbia River, the Derelict Vessel Task Force is now at work identifying and inventorying all the derelict and abandoned vessels within its area of responsibility.