'Evacuating Long Island' and other
Tales of Trojan Horse II
She looks like a utility boat, albeit one of considerable speed, and that arch on the aft end sends words and pictures into space, or where ever the unwired world leads, and there's a gatling gun up top, so yes, definitely a utility boat. (Photo: Don Sutherland.)
By Don Sutherland
It's great to have a security plan, but how do you know it works? You test it, of course, which besides being smart, is required by the Maritime Transportation Security Act. A security drill may be mandated for each vessel every ninety days, and a security exercise for the fleet once a year. Besides keeping the crews' training fresh, it sparks ideas from time to time -"they have to think about what they would do during an incident," says Capt. Stash Pelkowski, President of Roehrig Maritime and its security director, "and who to contact." It's all to the good, but it leaves something out. The response plans, the resources, the communications of two separate companies may be very good, but how do you know about their mutual compatibility, one way or another, or how they rely on various procedures and resources? Holding combined exercises would seem to address that one. Thus it was at the end of July that SUNY Maritime hosted an exercise called
Trojan Horse II, expanding security exercises into a larger group of associated events, aiming to increase the return on investment for all. The initial premise was to assess the security plans of Roehrig Maritime, KSea Transportation, and SUNY Maritime itself, with its MARAD-owned training ship Empire State. But other interested parties, military people, security people, and responders, stopped-in to see the activities, sometimes to participate, and learn some things they might find useful about boats and the way they work around an island city.
Eight Million Stories in an Island City
"It's a very important thing that the security officers in the public and private sectors get together," says Dr. Larry Howard, Chairman of SUNY Maritime's Global Business and Transportation Department., and the Executive Director of Trojan Horse. "It's clear that in the public sector everybody knows everybody. But in the private sector, in tugboats, they
don't know each other as well" from company to company, and from the private sector to the public. Yet in our crowded harbor, this would be the mix in any situation, crisis or otherwise. "It was a great networking opportunity," agrees Capt. Bill Sullivan, head of KSea's New York Division and its security director. "A tugboat is a pretty specialized piece of complex machinery, and having a couple of experts on-hand to fill-in some of the details for, say, FDNY, makes everybody more effective." Representatives were present from the private sector, including American Technologies, American Defense Systems, Balfour Technologies, and Pacific Data Vision, among others, sources of products ranging from body armor to 4D computer graphics simulators to voice transmission systems. From the public sector came the Coast Guard, the FBI, the U.S. Army, Marines, and Cavalry, along with representatives from NYPD and NYFD, among others. The "others" included SUNY Maritime students, who got to play terrorists intent
upon such undertakings as attacking the Empire State. "We want to integrate these experiences in the best security practices into our curriculum," says Dr. Howard, "so students can do things like vulnerability assessments, see how security plans are put together, and know how to test them." Among the scenarios acted-out was the evacuation of the U.N. by one of the vessels of Spirit Cruises. And then there was the evacuation of Long Island, on the premise that some incident had closed the roads, and water would be the only way out. Everyone who was involved was able to demonstrate how his own training and experience came into play, and observe how everyone else's did. When people like that start to network, a lot of discussion comes-up about procedures, protocols, and products. Individuals refine their command of a common language, and find out about the latest. What begins as a mandated exercise adopts some of the flavor of a convention and tradeshow.
24 � MarineNews � September, 2007