Is 'Unified Command' Partly to Blame for the Confused Federal Deepwater Horizon Response Effort

One of the issues the recently-established Presidential Commission into the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster should look into is the US command structure for major oil spill response. Major deficiencies in the way this system is designed could go some way to explaining the somewhat confused federal response to this catastrophic incident.

The US employs the Unified Command system for coordinating federal response to incidents such as this. This organisational structure was started in California for use in fighting forest fires. It has since been adapted for use around the world in the case of all types of emergencies, from earthquakes to hurricanes, e.g. Katrina. The way the system works is that a phalanx of fourteen government departments sit around a table, each with veto power over decisionmaking. There is an Incident Commander, appointed from the Coast Guard, but on paper at least this official has little sway over the various other departments involved, such as NOAA, EPA, OSHA, Fish and Wildlife, National Parks, MMS, not to mention the various Gulf states with interests in the spill. In effect, each of these agencies operates as the final authority within their area of jurisdiction and responsibility. In other words, while there is a certain degree of coordination between them, each agency operates within its own little 'silo'. No one tells anyone what to do, and everyone just informs everyone else of what they intend to do. The potentially disastrous consequences of such a control structure were no more evident than in the case of the 2005 Katrina hurricane disaster which struck the Gulf, where chaos was the order of the day. The current Gulf spill response effort is nowhere near as bad as Katrina, but obvious deficiencies at the core of the system linger five years later.

The American incident response regime contrasts sharply with the Canadian model, which is simply called Incident Command. The Canadian response model is a much more muscular Command and Control structure, with Coast Guard playing the role of Lead Agency, supported by numerous other federal departments, and with virtually no role for the provinces, such as British Columbia. Other departments and levels of government may not like the Canadian model- in fact, some downright detest it, but on balance it does tend to cut through the red tape and allow for quick, decisive action and leadership.

It is of course too early to tell whether the US Unified Command response model is to blame for confusion and tardiness with respect to numerous contentious issues such as subsea dispersant use, estimating the spill size, the existence of underwater plumes, to name but a few. Nevertheless, the Presidential commission does provide an opportunity to evaluate the system to see whether it helped or hampered the response effort in this particular case.