Nationally significant or large-scale incidents involving hazardous chemicals present unique challenges. The incident likely may occur without warning. The nature of the incident may or may not be immediately evident or understood and its scope and complexity may overwhelm local resources. As the incident likely will cross jurisdictional boundaries, there may be confusion regarding the specific authorities relevant to the incident, deconfliction of ICS12 leadership roles and responsibilities, processes for public warning and communication, etc. Additionally, law enforcement, forensic, and attribution activities related to terrorist or criminal acts may impact consequence management activities and decision-making processes.
Decisions will often have to be agreed upon by multiple agencies operating within a unified command structure as well as their elected leadership. Further, although numerous standards and regulatory guidelines exist to shape consequence management strategies, there is no absolute contamination level, remediation approach, or site clearance/reoccupation criteria that is universally applicable to every large- scale chemical incident.13 Therefore, coordination between FSLTT agencies and with appropriate private- sector entities, especially RPs, is critical to ensure that the hazardous chemical consequence management process is acceptable, effective, and equitable, yet with sufficient flexibility to ensure consideration of various incident-specific characteristics. These challenges can be addressed by comprehensive risk assessment and planning, understanding and codifying organizational roles and responsibilities, conducting exercise activities,14 and developing a defined, well-organized and agreed- upon approach to chemical incident consequence management decision-making.
This section provides an overview of key decision process guidelines, operational phasing, and an overarching planning framework for chemical incident consequence management.