“I am the eggman, no,
They are the eggmen, no,
I am the walrus, goo-goo-goo-joob.”
– John Lennon
I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together.
This from the “Oh no, this cannot be true” files …
A report from today’s Homeland Security Wire citing a story by USA Today’s Rick Jervis indicates that BP’s 582-page emergency-response “plan” may never have anticipated a massive oil spill like the one threatening the Gulf of Mexico and entire East Coast these days, but gosh darnit, it did warn that a spill could endanger animals such as “seals, sea otters and walruses” in the Gulf.
Okaaaaaaay …
If you’re suddenly wondering if you’re remembering your fourth grade elementary school teacher’s lessons (and countless documentaries on “Animal Planet”) accurately, you are. No such animals live in the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, but not in the warm waters off St. Petersburg, Fla.
While the “plan” (and again, we use that term pretty loosely here) was approved in July by the Minerals Management Service, an arm of the federal government, it now would seem that the massive document comprises mostly boilerplate language that was not tailored to the specific situation at hand.
It’s certainly true that many crisis plans have common strategies and tactics, however, comma, each crisis plan must be tailored to the organization’s specific environment and the contingencies that may be faced.
To cut and paste boilerplate language and call it a crisis response plan is not just lazy – in some cases, it’s absolutely criminal.
Related articles by Zemanta
- BP, Minerals Management Service, MMS, walruses, oil spill, Gulf of Mexico, otters, seals, Homeland Security Wire, emergency response plans (seminal.firedoglake.com)
Related articles
- Gulf of Mexico One Year Later (freetech4teachers.com)
