U.S. NAVY SALVAGE REPORT DEEPWATER HORIZON ... - ESSM

Final Report, SONS Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Gulf of Mexico, 27 April — 24 September 2010
SECTION D – LESSONS LEARNED AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Lesson:
Staging support for Venice was excellent. Support from the command
group was undesirable. It took 2 months to get weight handling equipment.
Recommendation: None.
Lesson:
Command centers moved SUPSALV equipment without notifying
SUPSALV.
Recommendation: SUPSALV personnel need an aggressive follow-up plan with the command
centers to personally verify the location of the material not accompanied by
SUPSALV personnel. This became especially apparent in Amelia, Grand
Isle, Resolve Yard (Theodore, AL), Port Fourchon, and BOH Brothers
Shipyard, LA.
Lesson:
A time delay occurred for the approval of ICS-213 RR USCG Resource
Request for Services or Material.
Recommendation: No real solution. SUPSALV personnel attempted to walk them through the
process of trying to replace the damaged equipment.
Lesson:
A disaster of this magnitude is often considered to be “organized chaos” in
the early phases of the response mode. For the most part, GPC management
did an excellent job organizing the response. Minor shortfalls existed with
the logistical aspect concerning food and accommodations for GPC
employees.
Recommendation: The establishment of a central command and control at the command trailer
in Gulfport during the initial response was essential to the tracking of
equipment, logistics, finance issues, coordination with ICS/UAC, etc.
Lesson:
In the early stages of the response, efforts receiving equipment in Gulfport
as the trucks arrived proved to be time consuming and tedious work.
Documenting ESSM gear and label information was a full time job for at
least one GPC employee.
Recommendation: The establishment of Enterprise, and one IT department employee in
Gulfport, would have been beneficial in the documentation and tracking of
all response gear arriving in Gulfport, specifically the establishment of the
use of barcode scanners.
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