NORCOM Scenerio 6

Looking at the Scenario Number 6 from our NORCOM list a couple of days ago link : Toxic Industrials Chemicals.


One of the difficulties with getting a grasp of what the situation is that there is no single group that tracks chemical accidents. You would think that the relatively new U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board  link would: but according to them: no.  As their site notes: “At the present time, no such comprehensive databases or statistics exist within the federal government. However, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), National Response Center (NRC), the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and other agencies do maintain certain accidental databases that vary in scope, completeness, and level of detail.”

So in other words they investigate on an as-needed basis, and don’t track their main focus of investigation. Sounds good!

Your first responders are usually going to be your local fire fighters. But the states will generally set up some sort of emergency response team. In North Carolina the first response is going to be the Regional Response Teams (RRT)  link. Each team has one special truck, and will raise to the site to contain the situation until a contractor can come in. That’s right the actual emergency is done by contractors. Hopefully, they already have some sort of time and material schedule set up: but the site does not mention this.

NC Regional Hazmat Regional Response Team

Of course when the situation gets really out of hand, like the 2006 Apex Waste Disposal Warehouse fire they punt link http://www.csb.gov/newsroom/detail.aspx?nid=22 . Apex is on the southern border of the State Capital (Raleigh). Good think large amounts of neuro-toxin were not released.

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Apex Fire: from probably a mile or so away.

Disaster Scenerios (continued)

One thing to look at with these scenarios is not to take them as the militaries idea of the last word on the event. The military doesn’t apparently require advanced degrees from their officers, but they appear to strongly emphasis it. Based on their love of jargon and power point slides, MBAs appear to be one of the popular choices. A quick perusal of business books will indicate that scenario planning methods are a popular alternative to “business planning.”


One strong advantage of scenario creation and work out over business planning is that you do not need to rely on an extended sequence of events to arrive at the useful point in the exercise. As Taleb  in his book the Black Swan noted at one firm he worked at, the managers always made a huge point of the companies 5 year plan. But before even 2 years were up the plan was already way off track, and the managers were gone. They are aware that Katrina was more disruptive than 1,000 killed and 5,000 hospitalized. Their scenario is looking at a plausible uncommon, but not extreme, event that they would be called out for: call it the twenty year hurricane versus the 50 year event.

When they run their exercises, they also like to add multiple perils simultaneously in an effort to stress the command structure, and get the officers used to multi-tasking their threats.