MarEx at the 2010 International WorkBoat Show New Orleans

The International Workboat Show in New Orleans has thus far been a resounding success.

The BP oil spill and the US moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico have not dampened the Gulf Coast’s perspective of the future. In fact, the WorkBoat Show has drawn a huge crowd of exhibitors from around the world and the Gulf Coast. The floor is filled with thousands of attendees whom are excited about the future of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the commercial boat industry.

Commandant (retired) Thad Allen of the US Coast Guard gave the Keynote Speech yesterday. Allen used parallels of incident command management between the September 11th terrorists’ attacks, the Katrina Hurricane devastation of New Orleans and the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in terms of how to manage future disasters from a national perspective. He referred to Katrina and the BP spill as events of “weapons of mass destruction without criminality,” and explained how during Katrina government at the local and state level were operating as self-deployed bodies without any communications between each other. When he took over he divided New Orleans into sectors and put locals in charge to manage the neighborhoods and assist those in need.

When the US began assisting Haiti after the earthquake, US officials asked Allen what could be done to expedite aid to the devastated country, and he told them to take control of the airspace, which ultimately allowed 160 aircraft a day to land. Allen said the BP oil spill was more like Apollo 13 than it was like the Exxon Valdez, because it was not a monolithic spill but hundreds of spills that were affected by variances in wind, currents and so forth. Allen said if there was one thing he could do over during the spill, he said it would have been taking over the airspace over the area because it was an ever changing spill often going in many directions and fly-overs were ultimately the best way to direct responders.

MarEx