by Kathleen Gleaves
When President Barack Obama and
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper signed the Beyond the Border Initiative
in February of 2011, it established a cross-border partnership focused on
perimeter security and regional economics. Their actions directed the two
leadership agencies, Transport Canada and the US Coast Guard, to oversee the
development of a Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness Action Plan.
The new Initiative pushed the
international collaboration effort beyond the immediate border crossing areas
well into the Puget Sound and beyond. While increasing security for both
countries with improved information sharing, the project also sought to
facilitate the legitimate flow of people, goods and services during a disaster
to help with regional response and economic recovery in the maritime
environment.
There is a lot at stake. The
estimated regional economic impact of imports and exports through the ports in
Washington and British Columbia is more than $200 billion annually. “The marine
industry is the lifeblood of our regional economy,” stated Matt Morrison,
Executive Director of the Pacific North West Economic Region (PNWER). A
sustained disruption to the flow of goods could have a devastating impact on
the local economy.
Once the ink dried and top
leaders returned to Washington DC and Ottawa, those charged with carrying out
the mission were perplexed as to how to go about achieving those lofty ideals.
Officials in British Columbia and Washington State were tasked with building
the initial plan, with the understanding that plans and guidelines built here
would transfer to the Great Lakes area and eventually to the Atlantic Region
where similar Action Plans would improve security and economic recovery across
the continent should either country be impacted by a significant natural
disaster or terrorist attack. The practices and standards built by this
initiative may influence future IMO standards for maritime resilience.
All parties agreed that bringing
the Port facilities back into service in a devastated area as quickly as
possible would support not only local response efforts, but assist with
economic recovery by bringing jobs back to the region. Another key
acknowledgement was that in order to help each other, a communications plan and
protocols for sharing information was needed. Sharing information does not come
easily for military operations, or private companies in intensely competitive
businesses.
It was a big job with a short
time frame. Transport Canada’s team, led by consultant Pat Docking, former
Transport Canada Maritime Commerce Resumption Strategy Coordinator, started the
process with a series of work meetings in Vancouver. Her team built a document
aimed at providing Guidelines for Communications and Information-Sharing
between the two countries – the foundation on which all response and recovery
efforts would be built.
In the meantime on the US side,
the Coast Guard had contracted with PNWER, the Pacific Northwest Economic
Region, to lead the American side of the effort and collaborate with the
Canadian Stakeholders. Docking believes that private industry “…working
alongside government, helped make history as they set aside competitive and
territorial differences to help craft a set of important draft guidelines and
other key documents that will enable cross-border communication, information
sharing and expedited recovery.”
The PNWER organization was
ideally situated to coordinate the regional effort. As their website states,
“The Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) is a statutory, public/private
partnership composed of legislators, governments, and businesses in the
Northwest states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington and the
Western Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and the Yukon
Territory.” The agency is well known regionally for their work on collaborative
efforts between public and private sectors in economic development and
resilience.
A workshop was scheduled to
validate and streamline the suggestions in the Guidelines into a workable
action plan. The process was to culminate in a large, bi-national exercise that
included stakeholders from the public and private sectors testing the action
plan.
A bi-national workshop led by
PNWER’s COO, Brandon Hardenbrook, was held at the Bell Harbor Conference Center
in Seattle in August. The event attracted 114 participants including
representatives from most large regional ports; Edward Dahlgren from Nanaimo,
Neil Clement from Bellingham and Cindy Jeromin from Metro Vancouver, as well as
representatives from Prince Rupert, Everett, Tacoma and Seattle. Multiple
agencies from local, state, provincial, and federal government branches joined
the process. Participants represented a broad spectrum of maritime entities
including transportation, manufacturing, large importers, tug and barge
companies, and shipping companies. Business sector participants as diverse as
Holland America and Boeing, Starbucks and AT&T, Cloud SafetyNet and the
Lummi Indian Nation also signed onto the project.
The workshop included a panel
discussion led by Eric Holdeman, Port of Tacoma. Discussions focused on giving
private sector businesses a forum for presenting their concerns about
disaster-related maritime economic recovery to the public and military agencies
charged with facilitating that recovery.
A lively discussion revealed a
common view that the intensely interdependent nature of the maritime economy
required a strong collaborative effort. Joe Huden, consultant to PNWER and
workshop facilitator with more than 40 years experience in military operations
and planning, emergency preparedness and FEMA disaster response, expressed it
well, “Maritime commerce has more moving parts than an expensive watch.”
The one thing all participants
agreed on was that the region was not prepared to deal effectively with
devastation on the level of that experienced in Haiti or Japan after
earthquakes in those countries.
Documented outcomes from the
workshop stressed three critical areas needing improvement; a way to share
accurate and timely information about the scope of the disruption; a better
understanding by government officials regarding what business and industry
needs in order to recover; and how to share resources across borders without
unnecessary burdens. One key finding during the exercise series was that even
if entities in both countries were willing to share resources including people,
equipment, berth space, and ships, International regulations and bureaucratic
red tape conspired to restrict those good intentions. All agreed that if the
final plans could gain improvements in these three areas, it would greatly
increase the region’s capacity for economic recovery following a disaster.
PNWER’s staff took the findings
from the workshop and developed a tabletop exercise that was held in October in
Everett and attended by more than 100 participants including representatives
from two large refineries, Shell and Tesoro, and Consul Generals from both the
US and Canadian Consulates. Tony Gutenberg from Terminal Systems, Inc. (TSI)
was a consistent supporter providing the critical shipping terminal
perspective. Outcomes from the exercise confirmed the direction set by the US
and Canadian working groups. Participants also supported the idea of including
the Communications and Information Sharing protocols as an official Annex to
the Pacific Northwest Emergency Management Arrangement (PNEMA), an existing
mutual assistance document focused on regional collaboration. Regional
stakeholders would be able to declare their support for the protocols by
signing the PNEMA document.
Additionally, the After-Action
Conference set in motion plans to seek support and funding for on-going work on
this important initiative, develop a Task Force to implement the continuing
work, and designate a lead entity or agency to monitor and encourage progress.
While more work is needed to implement the processes outlined in the Plan, Dr.
Allan Bartley, Director, Transport Canada’s Marine Security Policy, stated, “….
enhancing the capacity for recovery in our region is a goal worthy of the time,
effort and resources expended by the participants.”
USCG District 13, spokesperson,
Clifford Scott Bates says, “The ability to sustain interest and priority both
locally and nationally [is] essential for ensuring that our connected MTS
[Marine Transportation System] is best enabled to recover quickly from and
remain resilient against future disasters.”
Hurricane Sandy’s impact on the
East Coast, earthquakes in Japan, Haiti, New Zealand, and Chile point to the
value of establishing protocols for rendering assistance to impacted neighbors
long before a crisis tests local resilience in the face of disaster – our $200
billion dollar economy depends on it.
Kathleen Gleaves has 12 years
of experience in aviation and maritime security and emergency management, and
owns and operates an emergency management firm in Seattle specializing in the
maritime industry.
