Statement of The Honorable James L. Oberstar
September 30, 2009
Mr. Chairman, thank you for scheduling today’s hearing on the Coast Guard’s Search and Rescue Mission. I commend you and Congressman LoBiondo for your continued bi-partisan oversight of the Coast Guard’s core missions including the marine safety and icebreaking hearings you held in the 110th Congress and the drug and migrant interdiction hearing you held in February of this year. This is a true testament to your leadership of this Subcommittee and to ensure that we have the world’s best Coast Guard.
Search and Rescue is one of the Coast Guard’s oldest and most recognized missions. There are a lot of American’s who are unaware of the many missions the Coast Guard is responsible for conducting, but most of them know about Search and Rescue.
The Coast Guard is recognized as an international leader in Search and Rescue and over the years, the Coast Guard has made numerous improvements to its Search and Rescue capability by leveraging technology to assist their efforts and permit them to find and respond to distressed persons more rapidly. In 2007, the Coast Guard achieved a significant milestone by saving the one millionth life since the service’s inception in 1790 as a part of the Revenue Cutter Service.
We are here to examine the Coast Guard’s Search and Rescue capability and also to explore their response to two cases that ended with the loss of life. In the Buona Madre case, after initially dispatching resources to respond to a report of a collision between a deep draft vessel and a fishing vessel, the Coast Guard decided to stand down its response. Unfortunately the mariner’s body was found the following day.
In the case of the fishing vessel Patriot, the Coast Guard took two hours and 23 minutes to examine the intricacies of the case before they actually launched their assets. Although the mariners were likely dead before the Coast Guard was notified of the distress, it is unacceptable that a lack of communication with several Coast Guard units which delayed the launching of assets to respond.
I applaud the men and women of the Coast Guard for putting their lives in danger every day so that others may live. The Coast Guard is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to assist mariners, swimmers, kayakers, recreational boaters, fishing vessel operators, and others who are in distress.
I want to thank Vice Admiral Brice-O’Hara for being here today and we look forward to your testimony.
Chairman Cummings, I look forward to working with you and Ranking Members Mica and LoBiondo to ensuring that the search and rescue program of the Coast Guard maximizes the number of lives saved.
Statement of The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings
Subcommittee on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation
hearing on:
“The National Maritime Center and Mariner Credentials”
September 30, 2009
The Subcommittee convenes today to examine the Coast Guard’s Search and Rescue (SAR) mission. The SAR mission is one that the Coast Guard performs on a daily basis and it is a mission central to what our Coast Guard is – a service of guardians willing to risk their own lives to save those in peril.
The SAR mission is also a mission that the Coast Guard generally performs with great efficiency and with exceptional distinction. Every year, the service responds to tens of thousands of persons in distress and saves thousands of lives. In fact, in 2007, I joined the service in celebrating the one millionth life saved since the formation of the Revenue Cutter Service in 1790. This was an astounding milestone and one of which the Coast Guard and indeed the entire nation are rightly proud.
That said, there have been several recent cases in which, by the Coast Guard’s own account, avoidable failures occurred in the prosecution of SAR cases, and these cases point to problems that appear to echo problems we have seen in other mission areas, particularly marine safety.
Having examined in particular the SAR cases involving the Buona Madre and the Patriot in great detail, it appears that in the most general terms, the failures associated with these cases occurred not because policies that clearly direct how responses should be conducted – and that clearly call for a “bias toward action” – were not in place, but because for a variety of reasons, and in the face of cases that were admittedly complex and ambiguous, these policies were not implemented.
In the case of the Buona Madre, a 28-foot, wooden-hulled fishing vessel was essentially run-over by the motor vessel Eva Danielsen on July 13, 2007. At the time the incident occurred, the Eva Danielsen reported to the Vessel Traffic System (VTS) in San Francisco that it may have collided with a fishing vessel. However, subsequent investigation by the VTS – which actually should not have been involved in prosecuting what was even then a potential SAR case – and the Sector San Francisco Command Center concluded on the 13th of July that no collision had occurred. Therefore, assets that were within 34 minutes of arriving at the scene of the collision were called off and no further investigations were conducted until the morning of July 14th, when the body of the operator who had been on board the fishing vessel was discovered dead in the water.
In the case of the fishing vessel Patriot, the First Coast Guard District, Sector Boston, and Station Gloucester spent two hours and 23 minutes examining a potential SAR case before launching assets. The circumstances of this case were indeed very complex. However, even as facts suggesting a possible distress began to accumulate, and even though a launch of assets was recommended at several different points, Coast Guard personnel continued to investigate rather than to launch.
In this case, it is likely that both of the individuals on the Patriot probably died and their vessel had sunk before the Coast Guard was even alerted to the possible crisis. However, the subsequent investigation uncovered what the Coast Guard itself calls an “inefficient” response that “revealed several procedural, training, and judgment short-falls.”
While the administrative investigation into this case highlights these individual short-falls, the one issue on which the investigation’s final memorandum spends considerable time – and which is probably the most troubling – is the lack of experienced watchstanders on duty at the time of the Patriot incident.
In plain language, the final action memorandum concluding the investigation of this case, signed by Vice Admiral Robert J. Papp, Commander of the Atlantic Area Command, states, “[t]he actions and judgment exhibited by both the First District and Sector Boston [Command Center] watchstanders call into question the qualification and staffing procedures at both the Sector and District levels for the command center.” This finding is particularly troubling because it eerily recalls the findings of the National Transportation Safety Board in its “Safety Recommendation” report concerning the Morning Dew accident that occurred in December 1997. In that Recommendation, the Safety Board wrote, “[i]n order to appropriately assess the situation and respond correctly in atypical situations, watchstanders must have the ability to skillfully apply judgment and analytical thinking to the watchstanding task.”
The Patriot case was clearly an atypical case – as, to some degree, was the Buona Madre case. And the administrative investigation into the Patriot case makes clear that confronted with an atypical situation, the First District and Sector Boston’s prosecution of the incident exhibited “significant failures at critical portions of the case.”
The investigation into the Buona Madre highlighted a number of failures on the part of the Sector San Francisco Command Center – but frankly didn’t examine whether these were due to the inexperience of Command Center staffers. This would be important to know.
The Memorandum on the Patriot case also harkens back to the NTSB report on the Morning Dew on another point. Today, as at the time of the Morning Dew accident more than a decade ago – individuals in supervisory capacities often stand 24-hour watches and can sleep during portions of those watches. In some cases, supervisory personnel can even consult from home.
In the Morning Dew case, the communications watchstander on duty at the time did not awaken the duty officer, who was sleeping nearby. The watchstander stated that he did not feel “negative pressure or reluctance to awaken the duty officer; he simply did not think it was necessary.”
In the Patriot incident, there was a long delay in waking duty officers. According to the administrative investigation, the Command Duty Officer at Sector Boston was not awakened by watch center personnel until one hour and 44 minutes after the Sector received notification of this case – a case that we now know as the Patriot case. The administrative investigation into the matter notes that “[t]he fact that both the Sector and District Command Duty Officers (CDO) were asleep at the time of the incident may have played a role in the relatively inefficient processing and analysis of case information.” The investigation notes that failure to notify the CDOs and other senior members of the SAR chain of command “contributed to launch delays.”
The Patriot investigation also notes that requiring CDOs to stand a 24-hour watch that includes sleep time means that “potentially, the most experienced watchstander won’t be available when time critical decisions have to be made.” Responding to this finding, Admiral Papp ordered units in the Atlantic Area to identify those sectors in which duty officers were keeping 24-hour watches and to convert 24-hour watches to 12-hour watches where staffing permits. According to information provided to the Subcommittee, this review has found that there is not adequate staffing to allow all of the 24-hour positions to be converted to 12-hour positions.
The longer I am chairman of this Subcommittee, the more I begin to see similar patterns repeat themselves. And the one pattern that I see over and over again is how stretched the Coast Guard is, and how at times, despite its best intentions, gaps inevitably appear. The issues before us today are very complex and subtle, and I look forward to a detailed examination of them. I also commend the Coast Guard for its thorough examination of these cases, and for laying bare the problems it has found.
That said, the question now becomes are SAR operations – and, frankly, Sector Command Centers – organized and staffed in the best possible manner? If the answer to that question is no – and I fear that at least at some times in some Sectors, that is the answer – we must then understand what needs to be done to ensure that SAR operations and Command Centers are organized as effectively as possible.
To put it simply, each SAR case represents a life on the line, and we must ensure that the hand extended to those in distress is as strong as it can possibly be.
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