• Background: The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) operates the National Response Center (NRC) which is the sole national point of contact for reporting all oil, chemical, radiological, biological, and etiological discharges into the environment anywhere in the United States and its territories. During normal operations the primary method of reporting incidents to the NRC is via their 1 800 telephone number: 1 800 424 8802. The secondary reporting method is via the NRC Internet Web site http://www.nrc.uscg.mil. In the event that a Y2K outage may cause localized Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) outages both of these reporting methods could be unavailable.
• In order to prepare for possible PSTN and/or power outages that may result during the Y2K event, the NRC is seeking assistance from the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). State EOC’s and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide a link with the civil community. Assistance requested includes, supporting a wireless path for relay of any hazardous material spill and/or incidents to the NRC from an area where there is a PSTN outage. The HF path between FEMA and the USCG will be the FEMA HF radio calling frequencies shown above. Both USCG Communication Area Master Stations (CAMS) will be monitoring one of these frequencies, depending on time of day, and can be contacted on them should other landline methods of delivery be unavailable.
The two USCG CAMS are:
The minimum information which must be gathered and included in any report to the National Response Center is included in incident report form that may be found on the National Response Center’s Web Site: http://www.nrc.uscg.mil.