Could Oil Spill Debacle be Fatal to NIMS/ICS? (Opinion)

by Gerald Baron on July 20, 2010

BP Oil Spill/International Bird Rescue Research Center

[Photo: An oiled brown pelican upon intake on May 20 at the Louisiana Oiled Wildlife Center. Courtesy of the International Bird Rescue Research Center.]

In the 250,000-plus media reports on the Gulf Coast oil spill, there have been many examples of poor reporting. One was The Washington Post story on June 13: Oil Spill Makes Unlikely Partners of BP and the Federal Government. The article said the spill created an uneasy marriage between President Barack Obama and BP. It couldn't be more wrong.

For 20 years, federal, state and local government agencies have practiced this marriage with every major oil company and oil shipping company. Why? Because the law required it. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990, following the Exxon Valdez oil spill, required the government and private company identified as the “responsible party” to collaborate in stopping the spill and cleaning it up. The responsible party pays the government under authority of the lead federal agency, approves all plans, all actions and all information. That’s the way it has been — until 2010. That’s when the biggest event of all called for everything invested in this system to pay off.

But we have been bitterly disappointed. The marriage has turned rocky and the reason is politics. To avoid blame, the administration turned an effective marriage into a messy divorce. Public communication, the most visible element of the response, is no longer joint. The public no longer sees the parties working in concert toward a common goal. The public wonders why BP continues to bungle and why, as inept as it is, it continues to be involved at all.

This is potentially deadly to the future of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and Joint Information Center (JIC) because other responsible parties, emergency managers and elected officials, are observing this. Everyone who may be involved in a joint response under NIMS must wonder if they may too be thrown under the blame bus in such circumstances. Response effectiveness suffers when trust is lost. Public confidence in the response will be seriously undermined, as it has been here, when the partners are throwing stones at one another.

The political messaging that overwhelmed the JIC is made possible because of ignorance of NIMS’ Incident Command System and the JIC. The story from The Washington Post is just one example. Fox News ran a viewer survey asking: Who should manage the response, the federal government or BP? Almost every reporter incorrectly blamed BP for the initial low estimate of spill volume that was provided by Unified Command. (Incidentally factcheck.org and Rolling Stone got it right.)

The important question is: What effect will this event will have on how major events are managed in the future. Will they be characterized by mistrust and pre-emptive political messaging? Or will future administrations look at the damage caused by an overtly politicized response and return to the idea of a collaborative response built on proper oversight as well as mutual trust and respect — an idea that lies at the heart of NIMS and a good marriage. If not, the damage to our national interests may exceed that of the economic and environmental damage so visible in the Gulf.

Gerald Baron is the creator of the PIER System used by Unified Command for Web-based communications. He is executive vice president of O’Brien’s Response Management and the author of Now Is Too Late2: Survival in an Era of Instant News.

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If you look at FEMA's NIMS Resource Center, you will find it empty of any NIMS Alerts for new content so far in this fiscal year. Some of the documents (the JFO docs, for example) have been in DRAFT since 2006. This tells me all I need to know regarding the committment of the current administration regarding NIMS.

From jks August 05

The problem in the responder community is not ICS/NIMS. In most cases ICS/NIMS has been implemented and well used from the state level down to the first responders in the communities. There was a criticism from several parties leveled at FEMA during Katrina that federal responders were sent into the field with little or no understanding of the application of ICS and NIMS. We saw it again during the H1N1 response when the various federal agencies violated the purpose of the JIC to promote one message distributed by the many partners. Agencies and their parent organizations were distributing conflicting information as every public information officer tripped over their tongues to promote their version of facts. The oil spill cleanup and the comments contained in the article are another example of the federal response failing to comply with directives that the responder community are expected to follow lest we face the consequences including loss of funding or the ability of our communities to participate in certain programs. ICS/NIMS is not dead, it is a system that works as advertised if everyone follows it as directed. What has to happen at the federal level is the political appointees who don’t understand how the system works and who keep sending people into the field who don’t understand the system need to be replaced by professionals. Until the federal government follows its own rules we will continue to revisit this discussion after every event.

From Ed McGinley August 03

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water! NIMS/ICS/JIS/JIC work fine when the rules are followed. Politicians should support the best sytem in the world for collaborative solutions.

From Kelly King August 03

I have to take exception to the comments to date that little or impact will be suffered by the NIMS/ICS process based on the gulf oil spill. As a NIMS Compliance Officer by profession, I have been in direct contact with Federal personnel who clearly indicate that significant changes "are in the winds" as a result of this one incident in the way of new presidential directives, review and updating the National Response Framework and other overarching and guiding documents for Federal, State, Local and Tribal communities to comply with. Stand by folks, this disney ride has yet to begin!

From Joel Hendelman July 28

I agree 100% with Mr. Baron's conclusion that ignorance of NIMS leads to misunderstanding and misinformation provided to the general public. However, when discussing the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response it is important to keep in mind that federal management of the incident is dictated not by NIMS or the NRF but rather the National Oil and Hazardous Substance Pollution Contingency Plan. This plan was completed in 1999 and predates both NIMS and the NRF. I don't believe NIMS and its various components (JIC, ICS, etc) are even referenced in the National Contingency Plan. However, all of the Coast Guards authorities and responsibilities for a Spill of National Significance (SONS) are identified. I have no doubt that significant revisions of the National Contingency Plan will be forth coming as a result of this incident and hopefully result in its complete compatibility with NIMS. With this in mind we might then look at the Deepwater Horizon response and use its short comings to reinforce the need for the NIMS and NRF to be applied in EVERY federal response, or at least ensure that other federal, state and local contingency plans are compatible.

From Aaron July 27

This is one incident that ICS/NIMS, if applied appropriately, would have resolved 70 to 80 percent of coordination, control, management, and accountability issues that occurred during incident activities. The majority of direction and control, coordination and management failures are contributed directly to failure to appropriately and effectively implement and sustain ICS/NIMS. The BP Gulf Oil Spill incident reveals we still have a ways to go to understand and grasp using ICS/NIMS. Overall, the ICS/NIMS initiative has been effective, but we have a long ways to go before we understand its full application when experiencing large and complex-scale incidents, involving more than the typical and routine incident. Expanded instruction on application is needed, how it is supposed to work at every level during an incident having magnitude extending beyond that of local, county, state, or federal levels. ICS/NIMS emphasizes priviate sector involvement, but hasn't empahsised the extent in how to integrate components into an incident that goes beyond loccal, private, and political boundries. Following the BP Gulf Oil Spill crisis, it's crucial that the entire response direction adn control components be studied, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and apply lessons learned. Only when this occurs will we see a change, and the effectiveness and benefits of ICS/NIMS reaped. I honestly believe we have done a good job instructing and implementing ICS/NIMS into emergency response plans, but no doubt need significant improvement in its application regardless of size and scope of an incident or emeregency.

From Allen July 27

Yesterday, I spoke with a Fire Captain that has worked a month in the Gulf for a private contractor. He was working in a Command Post, in a command level position and related the following conversation. While talking to a person also working the CP and not from the first responder field, she stated to him that the situation in the Gulf was to big for ICS/NIMS. It brought me back to a statement made after the national embarrassment I call "Katrina". I will never forget a New Orleans official commenting about how they were, "to busy for NIMS". I think rather that discussing the erasure of NIMS, I think the discussion should start about mandating NIMS for provides of critical infrastructure services and private contractors responding to industrial related disasters. Does it not make sense that the private response mesh with the public responders? I know that the goals of NIMS have still not been met on the public side but that does not mean that we should give up on NIMS. Let us remember that every disaster is a local disaster. When our communities call 911, they are not calling DHS. Let us remember that when the oil rig blew up, DHS did not show up to put it out. How about the rescue operations? Local response was there first there too. NIMS/ICS provides us with solid bedrock from which to operate. It allows us to build a response structure as big as we need, or as small as we want. People thinking that the Gulf situation is, “too big” for NIMS/ICS do not understand NIMS nor do they understand the impacts of their failure. Just ask the people of New Orleans.

From Dan Linehan July 22

Its a credible question. We all know incidents drive policy, much like the creation of NIMS etc... following Andrew/9/11 etc... So what will the next framework be? Will they abandon the bottom up approach and develop a command and control mechanism that subverts local and state jurisdictions in controlling first response? I think something is coming down the pike, and I bet DHS has a ton of say in what that will look like. Given that DHS likes the top down approach, I can envision a new 600 million sq ft command center in McClean Va set up to manage incidents using a military style command center approach run by the feds. Lets all hope and pray Mr. Fugate can put up a good fight after this incident.

From Greg July 21

I am highly doubtful that this incident will have much impact on NIMS/ICS as much as it would on the people who made bad decisions. NIMS/ICS is simply a framework in which to operate which enhanced efficiency, it does not stop bad leadership or decisionmaking.

From Natan Mandelbaum July 21

It truly instantaneous gratification of news. Control of the information disseminated is and always been key and a challenge in a 24 hr news environment. News media is now on scene well before the Information Officer can even get a JIC up and running. With the bad press from Katrina as a backdrop, the NIMS/ICS structure could be easily questioned. But, to add, I don't think the politics of the matter helped eiither. Mr Baron opinion is spot on. Thank you.

From C J Deeley July 20