Emergency Preparedness: Port Fourchon

Port Fourchon Hosts Multi-Agency Emergency Preparedness Exercise

GLPC-C4 Regional Hurricane Exercise at Port Fourchon Emergency Operation Center
Photo/Greater Lafourche Port Commission 

More than 40 federal, state and local emergency management and law enforcement officials participated in a joint training exercise July 26 in Port Fourchon's emergency operations center (EOC) to practice coordinated emergency management in the event of a major hurricane affecting the bayou region.

"We are pleased to bring together all of our response partners for this exercise," said Chett Chiasson, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission (GLPC). "Coordinated multi-agency training exercises help us all to be better prepared for future storms, and we know that being better prepared helps us to keep our first responders safer in a real-life emergency scenario as well as get our port and our tenants back up and running even faster once a threat has passed."

Participating agencies in addition to the port commission were Lafourche Parish Government, Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office, Morgan City Harbor and Terminal District, the Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security, U.S. Coast Guard, NOAA, and LOOP – the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port.

Financing for the exercise came from a federal port security grant.

The port commission's GLPC-C4 command and control system allows multiple users to see and interact with all available streams of data to make decisions collaboratively and in real time. Through the GLPC-C4 system, this collaboration happens electronically. Decision-makers who are absent from the room can have secure access to see and participate in real time, no matter where they are.

"We take our responsibility to keep over 90 percent of the U.S, Gulf of Mexico energy production online extremely seriously," said Mr. Chaisson. Exercises like these are one of the many ways that we are making Port Fourchon a model of disaster resiliency and preparedness all along the Gulf Coast."