MANAGING RISKS DURING RESPONSE USING THE INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM TO MANAGE RISK AND IMPROVE SAFETY

Abstract

ABSTRACT Safety is often viewed as a separate and distinct aspect of incident response that is not directly tied to the development of strategies and tactics. Safety often becomes a function more oriented towards regulatory compliance than with the actual safety of the response workers. The Safety Officer ends up performing audits of field activities and conducting safety briefings without input to the decision making process. A Safety Officer functioning in this myopic way may satisfy the requirements of the safety laws and regulations, but may not contribute in a positive way to the reduction of risk to the responders. By function, the Safety Officer is the risk manager for the response organization. The Safety Officer does not simply assure that the requisite safety briefings are carried out and evaluate safe practices in the field during operations, but also must help the spill management team weigh the advantages and disadvantages of various strategies and tactics before they are put into the Incident Action Plan. As the risk manager for the response, the Safety Officer must be intimately involved in the development of the strategies and tactics that ultimately become written assignments in the Incident Action Plan. While this may seem straight forward, the practical considerations of integrating risk management into the complexities of an accelerating planning process while working with the high energy personalities of a spill management team can make this task daunting. This paper examines the role of the Safety Officer, emergency response risk management, and identifies methods to better integrate safety considerations into the planning process.