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rity – the U.S. Coast Guard may not be staffed nor
equipped to handle the next major maritime disaster by itself. Whether we are hit with a catastrophic
oil spill immediately off our shores, near-simultaneous hurricanes flooding major population centers
on our Coasts, a foreign-flagged tanker ship dropping inflatable speedboats loaded with armed terrorists and explosives bound for our shores, or any
other grand-scale maritime disaster, there simply
may not be enough U.S. Coast Guard personnel
nor resources to handle the threat.
July-Aug 2016 Edition
The NASBLA BOAT
Program is innovative in that it worked
around the insurmountable financial
and logistical impossibilities of expanding the U.S. Coast Guard to
meet the mission, and instead created a model to
train federal, tribal, state, county and local maritime
responders to a single standard and make use of
assets already in place.
Prior to the advent of the NASBLA BOAT Program,
all distinct State and local agencies employed different tactics and even different terminology across
different jurisdictions, so there was limited interoperability when disasters compelled different law enforcement and other maritime response agencies
to work together. Now, because of this program,
thousands of maritime responders have been
trained to work together under a single national response standard while addressing and preventing
The NASBLA BOAT Program was conceived from a need to
address that quandary.
Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. Coast Guard
had been trying to figure out a way to get more
boats and personnel in the water in response to a
terror attack, and when Hurricane Katrina struck
the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, it broadened
the need to address all hazards.
Katrina taught three defining lessons:
1. Maritime agencies are going to have to work together
2. Agencies have to evolve to do a better job in the
next disaster
3. Agencies have to engage in strict evaluation of
both training and experience, to repeat the successes while not repeating the mistakes.
With those lessons in mind, NASBLA, representing
all 56 United States and territories, went into overdrive with the U.S. Coast Guard to develop a national program of standardized training, typing, and
credentialing across diverse enforcement agencies, and the first NASBLA BOAT Program course
graduated its students in October of 2009.
emergencies.
To learn more, please see the following references:
Link to historic MOU signed by USCG and NASBLA, recognizing the BOAT Program as the National
Standard of training for maritime law enforcement
officers and emergency responders.
Link to Proceedings article, “Just Add Water – A
Recipe for Border Security” (Page 45)
Article on how “Training Saves Lives” in Small Craft
Advisory
Article on “The Power of Partnerships – A Coast
Guard Officer’s Perspective” in Small Craft Advisory (Page 16)
Good luck to NASBLA
on becoming a Winner of the 2016 American Security Today’s
Homeland
Security
Awards Program!
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