RALEIGH -- If Gulf Coast crude washes up on North Carolina beaches and state emergency workers mobilize, the battle plan will be a familiar one, even if the enemy is not.
"Unfortunately, North Carolina has lots of experience with natural disasters," said Kenneth Taylor, the disaster response coordinator for the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources. "They have names like Fran and Floyd."
Many of the same people and agencies that work together on hurricane duty will be engaged in containing and cleaning up oil, as well as monitoring fish and wildlife. Oil spills may not be a regular occurrence in North Carolina, but hurricanes and winter storms certainly are. Staffers on the state, federal and local level know each other well after years of inter-agency emergency work.
"It absolutely brings us closer together," said Doug Hoell, the state's director of emergency management.
Hoell will depend on the state's oil-spill emergency plan if spilled crude threatens North Carolina - at this point, a distant but frightening prospect. The 48-page plan sets out workloads for groups as diverse as the state's marine fisheries division, which will sample fish for contaminants, to the highway patrol, which will coordinate traffic, to the agronomic services division, which will assess damage to farmland.
"We're always thinking ahead," Hoell said.
North Carolina devised its first oil-spill response plan in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. The plan is reviewed periodically, Hoell said, and his division was in the midst of an update when Gov. Bev Perdue recently asked that it be expedited.
We actually planned for this? Why, yes.
The plan needed only minor changes. Stipulations were added that volunteers need the proper equipment and training before cleaning up oil. A paragraph was removed that called for the division of forest resources to provide meals for emergency workers. That chore will be handled instead by the emergency management logistics team.
The revision work was done with the knowledge that the oil probably won't reach the state's shoreline. The National Center for Atmospheric Research has released computer models that show how the oil could move its way up the East Coast. But the agency has said the models provide only a scenario, not a forecast.
"All the information we have says that there is a remote chance that it will affect North Carolina," Hoell said.
By the time the oil reaches this far north, it will have deteriorated to tar balls, he said. Sheets of oil, like the ones soaking wildlife on the Gulf Coast, are not expected.
Not likely, but just in case ...
In preparation, fisheries staff have been taking samples of seafood and freezing them so they can compare them to samples taken if the oil arrives.
State agencies have been discussing plans for the ponies that live on parts of the Outer Banks to ensure their health and safety.
"I get paid to plan for things that we hope never happen," Taylor said.
According to the plan, the U.S. Coast Guard will take the lead if oil affects coastal waters, and the EPA is in charge of inland waters. If oil hits North Carolina, state agencies will work with these groups, as well as BP, to execute the containment and cleanup efforts.
Coincidentally, emergency responders had an oil-spill exercise on Ocracoke Island in late March. Hoell feels prepared for what may come. He has spoken with his counterparts in the Gulf and knows that no matter what happens in North Carolina, it will not match the severity of the disaster in Louisiana and Alabama.
"Have mercy," he said. "They have been wrapped up with this thing since the day it began."
