preparedness

This is the fifth blog in a week-long series to highlight the importance of disaster preparedness. Follow us this week as we take a look at how NOAA prepares for natural and human-made disasters, and how you can prepare for the 2018 hurricane season. Share your #DisasterPreparedness strategy by commenting on our blog, or replying to our Twitter and Facebook.

This is the fourth blog in a week-long series to highlight the importance of disaster preparedness. Follow us this week as we take a look at how NOAA prepares for natural and human-made disasters, and how you can prepare for the 2018 hurricane season. Share your #DisasterPreparedness strategy by commenting on our blog, or replying to our Twitter and Facebook.

This week, NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration is highlighting the importance of disaster preparedness. Follow us this week as we take a look at how NOAA prepares for natural and human-made disasters, and how you can prepare for the 2018 hurricane season. Share your #DisasterPreparedness strategy by commenting on our blog, or replying to our Twitter and Facebook.

You could call it a black gold rush. Technological advances like hydraulic fracking have made harvesting oil profitable in the U.S. again and changed the global petroleum market. For decades, the U.S. was dependent on oil imports and banned crude oil exports to protect domestic reserves. This changed in 2015, when the U.S. lifted the 40-year export embargo on crude oil and gave the oil industry access to the global crude oil market.

This weekend, NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary System is kicking off the beginning of the national “Get into Your Sanctuary” Initiative. The sanctuary system protects America’s most iconic natural and cultural marine resources — many of which are open to public recreation. This initiative is a system-wide public outreach effort to raise awareness about our nation’s marine sanctuaries through site events and other activities.

When a disaster occurs, it’s critical that the organizations involved in the response can communicate and share information quickly and effectively.

That means groups as diverse and numerous as emergency management, fire service, law enforcement, emergency medical, and responders from local, state, tribal, and federal governments all need to be on the same page. At NOAA, we’re working with our partners to help ensure that the information responders need flows quickly and accurately—when they need it.

How do you handle a polar bear covered in oil?  That was just one aspect of the annual Mutual Aid Deployment exercise last month on Alaska’s North Slope oil field.

Staff members from our Emergency Response Division and the Assessment and Restoration Division as well as other NOAA offices participated in the three-day exercise. Each year government agencies, oil companies, and oil spill removal organizations in the region work together to respond to a simulated oil spill in Alaska.

As part of our ongoing commitment to share our expertise in spill response with other nations, the Emergency Response Division recently hosted a delegation from China’s National Marine Hazard Mitigation Service.

The Chinese agency requested the meeting to learn about our strategies and tools for responding to environmental hazards and to exchange information about China’s marine emergency response programs.