Responding to a Biological Incident

摘要

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA), Environmental Response TEAM (ERT), was established in October 1978 to provide technical assistance to On-Scene Coordinators, (OSC's), National Response Team (NRT), Regional Response Teams (RRT's), EPA Headquarters and Regional Offices, as well as other United States and Foreign Governmental Agencies, in the area of environmental emergency issues, such as chemical spills, uncontrolled hazardous waste site and terrorist incidents. On July 29th 2004, the USDA received an anonymous Email from a hot mail account in Canada identified 3 specific containers aboard the M/V Rio Puelo, one of which contained a " harmful biological substance". The three container were part of a five container shipment of boxes lemons from Argentina bound to Canada. The vessel had a total of 2204 containers of which 260 of the containers were loaded at the same port as the lemons. The containers were to be off loaded at the Port of Newark then transported via truck to Canada. The federal On scene coordinator responsible for managing this incident had to first determine how creditable the threat was and then how response to it.