I wish I could adequately describe the Incident Command Center in Mobile, or, more

precisely, the activity, commitment, passion and professionalism that pervades this operation.

If an incident, whether hurricane, tornado, explosion, earthquake, or oil spill occurs in the United States one or more Incident Command Center is established immediately and populated by local, state, and Federal government components, military personnel and civilian personnel -- anyone who is capable of solving problems arriving from the "incident."

For this Oil Spill there are major "Incident Command Centers" in Houma, LA, Mobile, and another being established in St. Petersburg, FL.  The one in Mobile includes everything that happens from the Mississippi/Louisiana line to and including the Florida panhandle.  The one at St. Pete will address the Florida pennisula.

Is BP committed?  They moved the Center from a convention center in Mobile to a vacant Mall in a single night.  They purchased the Mall. The Mall is populated by

more than 1,000 people including BP staffers, contracted employees, National Guard, Coast Guard, State employees assigned to the Command center, uniformed members of the United States Public Health Service, cooks, cleaning people, weathermen, IT support personnel, City of Mobile Policemen, supply personnel -- I know there are more AND ALL ARE PAID BY BP OR THEIR AGENCIES ARE REIMBURSED BY BP.

Mark and I were briefed by the Coast Guard Captain (I thing that is what the CG calls their O-6's), the BP person in charge, a Coast Guard Captain, and Wayne Stover of Mississippi's DEQ, the Deputy Incident Commander.

I don't mean to sound pompous here, but...I have one of the best jobs in the world.  I get to shake hands and say, "thank you" to the committed, passionate Mississippians who are working to save our state and the Gulf Coast way of life.  It was my honor to have met them.

You will see pictures of just two sections where people are working.

THIS IS A WAR ROOM.  Everyone wears a different colored vest, depending on your area of responsibility.  There is an area for planning.  Their responsibility is as basic as determining how many rakes, latex gloves, and personnel are needed the next day and where, to looking at the weather 24 hours to seven-to-10 days out to determine when to move personnel to safety without bringing them 60 miles or more to the shore, to determining how many skimmers are out, how many in reserve and how many available.

There is an operations section which responds to those plans as well as responds quickly when local spotters see an unattended slick.

On that note, I listened to General Honore', the hero of New Orleans, demanding daily flights to spot sheens.  Apparently he has been ill-informed.  DEQ and MDR fly MANY times a day in both fixed wing and helicopters locating sheens.  Heck, we even use Iraq intelligence gathering planes at night.  We have planes doing this several times a day and through the night.

Make no mistake -- while everyone works together, the Coast Guard is IN CHARGE.  Coast Guard personnel are everywhere.  These are reservists called up for this incident.  Mark and I met a female officer from Seattle (where she was a teacher) an environmental consultant from Boston and a dad of four from Kansas (Coast Guard in Kansas?)

As to BP...again I found people committed to making this right.  BP has pulled people from all over the world.  Showing us around was the project manager.  An American, his regular responsibility is BP pipe lines in Georgia...as in the country of...as it runs through three eastern European countries.  For the last three years he has lived in Azerbaijan.  He appeared to be as passionate to do his job as other people are in decrying it.

There's a logistics section, vessels of opportunity section that resolves problems privately owned boats are having with BP, a supply section, a kitchen that feeds people all the time.

(Just an aside -- there's a well-stocked snack/break room, where everything from fresh fruit to sodas are free.)

You would be proud of our Mississippi group who are in this incident center.  We were told by the Coast Guard that or people came prepared to work and are working hard.  Like I said, I was very, very honored to shake their hands.  They know what their mission is.

When we met with the Mississippi personnel, both yesterday and today, Mark and I made it clear that we wanted to learn what if anything the legislature could or should do to smooth this learning curve out, insure that someone was keeping a log to do a lessons learned and after action report to minimize the learning curve in the next disaster, and to just learn ourselves the mission and responsibilities of different agencies in responding to a disaster of mega proportions.

I hope in some way, I have been able to convey to you the scope of this response.  It is huge, costly, a steep learning curve, and populated by committed, passionate people.  I hope I don't --- well maybe I should -- sound like some cheerleader, but we are very lucky to have our Mississippi people working for us.  They could go anywhere in private business and readily get a job, but they choose to work for the State of Mississippi.

I also hope that I have conveyed that while all is not perfect, the kinks are being worked out, people and local governments are being served, and BP while culpable, is heavily committed to correcting this.

The pictures include a couple of views of a couple war rooms, one of Mark being briefed by DEQ's Wayne Stover and Eric (I forgot his last name) who is BP's man in the ICC.  There is also one of a burn-off.  I said yesterday it was natural gas, but Mark informed me they are actually burning off oil still leaking from one of the crimped spots in that collapsed pipe.

If you have some questions, let me know.  I am sure I have left something off.