Hurricane Ike Response

Oil on the water near a marina, Kemah, TX

OR&R Responds to Hurricane Ike

In anticipation of response needs, OR&R staff were deployed to Louisiana and Texas ahead of Hurricane Ike's landfall to provide ready assistance in post-storm response efforts. More OR&R staff were mobilized and en route soon after Ike's landfall to increase the level of assistance.  This field staff is also remotely supported  by other OR&R technical experts from offices across the country.

OR&R's Scientific Support Team is providing trajectory information, incident maps, field reconnaissance data, and status reports on many facilities across Ike's coastal impact zone.  This team has and will continue to help the U.S. Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency, as needed.  OR&R is also working with state and other federal agencies, including natural resource trustees in Louisiana and Texas. Using information from these agencies, as well as from NOAA's National Geodetic Survey (NGS) remote sensing imagery, OR&R is beginning to identify and investigate oil spill concerns.

Search and rescue activities are still first priority.  Also, significant logistical constraints in the hurricane impacted areas currently limit our on-scene presence. Information regarding spills or hazardous releases is just beginning to be reported daily from various sources.  Potential spills and releases include fuels, refined oil products and crude oil, but also hazardous materials such as acidic process water.   At present, over 40 and possibly as many as 100 spills or hazardous releases have been reported.  Fortunately, most appear to be minor in scale.  

As the focus shifts from search and rescue to response, OR&R staff assistance to response efforts will increase, with a greater focus on the potential natural resource injuries that may have resulted from spills and hazardous releases.   OR&R is coordinating closely with State and other Federal agency representatives from Louisana and Texas in our response and injury assessment efforts.

Oil appears to be streaming south from point sources in an inundated wetland near Galveston, TX.