OCTOBER 2, 2015--The Coast Guard and other federal, state and local agencies participated in a two-day, government-led, full-scale exercise on September 22-23 to evaluate the capabilities and effectiveness of the Coast Guard Sector Hampton Roads area contingency plan.

Coast Guard Sector Hampton Roads, along with Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, Hampton Roads Incident Management Team, Virginia Port Authority, NOAA, and others participated in the exercise simulating a worst-case discharge of fuel oil in the vicinity of Coast Guard Base Portsmouth and the Craney Island Fuel Depot on the Elizabeth River. More than 200 participants engaged in multi-agency coordination.

The exercise required participants conduct operations of an emergency oil spill response, including creating a unified command, establishing the incident planning, finance, logistics, public information components and oil
recovery strategies. Participants coordinated pollution incident response, providing an opportunity for the response community to improve preparedness, identify weaknesses and strengths, and share best practices within an incident command and unified command framework. This exercise allowed players to assess the adequacy of resources, plans and policies to support the pollution response mission.

Planning for this exercise required a joint effort among the Coast Guard, Navy and Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and NOAA for more than a year. Regularly-scheduled planning efforts between the federal government and industry are required by the National Preparedness for Response Exercise
Program guidelines.

“The exercise was a great opportunity to work along with other agencies within the Port of Hampton Roads to test our ability to respond to incidents,” said Frank Csulak, NOAA Scientific Support Coordinator. In addition to actively participating in the exercise, OR&R's Emergency Response Division provided spill trajectory and oil weathering modeling, simulated and real-time weather forecasts, Endangered and Threatened Species Act and Historic Preservation Act consultations, simulated shoreline assessment and natural resources at risk.

For further information, contact Frank.Csulak@noaa.gov.

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