“As a marine sciencetechnician for the Coast Guard, I go to and conduct a lot of training concerning oil, oil cleanup, hazmat, emergency situation management etc. This time it is not a drill it is the real thing. One hopes the real thing will never happen and when it does it is alarming. I don’t want to let my country down. This is daunting,” said Michelle K. Duty in an e-mail to the Variety. She added: “I want to help out in any way possible. When I think of Saipan and the beautiful water it makes me want to put forth an even stronger effort to protect the environment. Living on Saipan, interacting with the community and the people I can really feel how close the people are with the water and the land. I think living in the city people get away from where their food comes from, I know the fisherman and where he caught the fish that I am buying from his cooler, I know the water is clean and I can be safe eating from it. What would happen to this island if something like this happened here?”
The Marine Safety Detachment on Saipan is a small unit of only three active duty personnel under the command of Sector Guam.
While en route to Louisiana two weeks ago for her 31-day deployment, Duty shared her thoughts upon learning of the oil spill.
“I thought and still do think it is tragic. I first, was worried about the lives after the explosion, after that I was concerned about the oil. I was hoping it would be stopped the first week. I just completed training with CNMI/U.S. Fish and Wildlife and learned what huge efforts are involved when wildlife becomes threatened or at risk, and thought if this hits the shoreline this has the potential to be a SONS, or Spill of National Significance,” she said.
The Coast Guard, she added, “will put me where they think is best. I could be on the shore working with cleanup crews to answering phones. All jobs are important, I’m not picky.”
She recalled that when she found out that “they wanted me on the coast. I had 3 1/2 hours to get everything in place. I left on the 4 a.m. flight the following morning. They told me I would be gone of 31 days. It does not give one much time to really contemplate about the situation. Truthfully I thought I need to do my laundry and pack. Deal with my feelings later.”
Duty conducts marine-safety activities such as investigating pollution incidents, monitoring pollution cleanups, conducting foreign-vessel boarding to enforce pollution and navigation safety laws, conducting harbor patrols for port safety and security, inspecting waterfront facilities and supervising the loading of explosives on vessels.
MSTs like Duty may be assigned to the National Strike Force for oil and hazardous-material response.
MSTs are also the Coast Guard’s safety and environmental health experts ashore.
Duty is an FOSCR, or Federal On Scene Coordinator, pollution investigator, HAZWOPR, or Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Standard, trainer, waterfront facility inspector port state control inspector for foreign vessels, container inspector as well as harbor safety, and explosive load handling supervisor.
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