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NATIONAL PARK SERVICE MORNING REPORT Thursday, September 8, 2011 INCIDENTS East Coast Areas Recovery Operations Continue In Carolina Coastal Parks Hurricane Irene recovery operations have been completed in most parks, but incident management teams and park staffs continue their ongoing efforts at Cape Lookout and the Outer Banks Group. Here are today's updates. Cape Lookout - The park is being assisted by the Midwest IMT (Jim Hummel, IC) and a regional assessment team. As of yesterday, 54 people were committed to the recovery operation. The team will be turning the incident over to the park late this afternoon and demobilizing. Accomplishments yesterday included the following: Great Island - The reroute of the Back Road south of Great Island has been completed. The Back Road is finished from Great Island to Cape Point. Resource management staff flagged the designated route of the Back Road north of Great Island in the footprint of the old road. Posts and cables were installed to mark the road through Great Island. Rehab work was completed on 18 out of 26 cabins. Portsmouth - Removal of the damaged section of the Haulover Dock is underway. Outer Banks Group - The three parks in the group - Cape Hatteras, Wright Brothers and Fort Raleigh - are being supported and assisted by the Eastern IMT (Zeph Cunningham, IC), a SETT team, a regional assessment team and sawyer teams. A total of 113 people were committed to the recovery operation as of yesterday. Maintenance teams continue to work diligently to restore facilities to operational status, including functioning restroom facilities on Bodie Island, and removal of 60 hazardous trees within Fort Raleigh. Ocracoke Visitor Center, lighthouse and other visitor facilities will open today. Aircraft assigned to the team provided transportation to Dare County emergency medical service teams as part of the continued support the team has provided the community and other government agencies. Concerns today include very high surf due to Hurricane Katia. Accomplishments yesterday included the following: Bodie Island - Law enforcement rangers continued to staff the checkpoint and conduct beach patrols. An assessment of the lift station revealed that it was operational, so restrooms were opened. HVAC was cleaned at the maintenance compound and HVAC work was completed at Whalebone Junction. Wright Brothers AC is now functioning. Maintenance completed the front part of the lighthouse fence, continued cleanup at the maintenance compound and bulkhead, and continued riprap work at Off-Island Road. Sawyers mitigated 63 hazards in the Fort Raleigh area. Chipping work continued. Saw work was completed on Lighthouse Road and it was opened yesterday afternoon. Hatteras Island - The lighthouse and visitor center remain closed to visitors. The Ramp 43 parking lot was cleared of debris and reopened. A good deal of debris remains in the old lighthouse parking lot, but it is open. Maintenance worked on repair of the Frisco bathhouse steps and should finish by today. Ocracoke Island - Water and electric work continued on the dock. Work on the AC and electric in the lighthouse keeper's house continued. Large signs were installed on South Road. Installation of carsonite posts and “No Vehicle” signs continued on the beach. Cleanup of downed limbs was completed behind the Ocracoke Preservation Society. Shingles and roof repairs were completed on the visitor center. The lighthouse and visitor center are now open. Air Operations - Conducted five hours of helicopter flight time and transported 23 passengers. Employee Assistance - Remaining team members demobilized. Resource Advisors - Work continued on a final report, submitting it to park staff for their comments and edits. Assessment Team - All assessment team members have demobilized except one. The remaining members continued to work on damage assessment project statements. [Bill Halainen, Editor] Grand Teton NP VC Evacuated Following Accidental Bear Spray Discharge As a park ranger was greeting visitors for a morning program in the Colter Bay auditorium this past Tuesday, a man sat down on what was apparently his unsecured can of bear spray, causing the can to discharge its contents of highly irritating spray into the room. The irritating element in bear spray is oleoresin capsicum, the same element in the pepper spray carried by law enforcement rangers but with a higher percentage of the irritant. The ranger immediately recognized what had happened and directed all the occupants to the emergency exits. The visitor who accidently discharged the bear spray ran from the room and building. Park emergency personnel were notified of the incident, as the building's air handling systems moved the residual pepper spray into the main lobby. The first arriving units found approximately 20 employees and visitors in the main lobby coughing and experiencing other side effects from the pepper spray. Incident command was established and the building was evacuated, after which structural fire personnel in full PPE began ventilating the building and emergency medical staff evaluated both employees and visitors. All the affected individuals declined medical treatment. Visitor services were continued through the day at portable tables in front of the visitor center while cleanup was begun by facility management staff. Cleanup presented a challenging task, though, as the irritant is dispersed in an oil-based aerosol that attaches to any surface it contacts, including vinyl, plastics, carpeting, clothing and human skin. The cooperating association bagged and sealed many soft items, such as t-shirts and stuffed animals, for decontamination at a later date. Rangers were unsuccessful in locating the person who discharged the bear spray, but statements from the interpreter in the room and other visitors indicate that the discharge was accidental. The visitor center was reopened on Wednesday. [Patrick Hattaway, North District Ranger/Incident Commander] Redwood N&SP Rangers Intervene In Suicide Attempt Three rangers - two from the National Park Service and one from the state - responded to a call regarding an unresponsive woman on the Peacock Bar Road. Arriving on scene, the rangers found an unconscious and unresponsive elderly woman slumped forward in the driver's seat of a sedan. The rangers found a suicide note, entered the vehicle, and assessed the woman, who had apparently ingested a large number of sundry pharmaceuticals. She was found to be unresponsive, cyanotic, and apneic. After clearing her mouth and airway, they began ventilating the woman via bag valve mask. After several minutes of ranger BLS level care, Del Norte County Ambulance ALS caregivers arrived on scene and assumed patient care. The woman recovered fully from her failed suicide attempt. Rangers contacted family members and facilitated family intervention on her behalf. [Lorant Veress, North District Ranger] Blue Ridge Parkway Suicide Victim Found at Park Overlook On the morning of Monday, August 29th, Augusta County dispatch was notified by phone that a woman was slumped over the steering wheel of a vehicle at the Rockfish Valley overlook. Rangers from the both Blue Ridge Parkway and Shenandoah National Park responded along with Augusta County Sheriff's Office deputies. They found that the woman had suffered a gunshot wound to the head and determined that the wound was likely self-inflicted. Investigation at the scene indicated that the 39-year-old woman from Augusta County, Virginia, died from the gunshot wound. This was the one of three incidents involving visitor fatalities within a 72-hour period in the park's Ridge District. [Kurt Speers, Ridge District Ranger] Blue Ridge Parkway Wrecked Vehicle Found With Victim Inside Park dispatch received a report of a vehicle over a steep embankment near the northern end of the parkway on the afternoon of August 28th. An Augusta County Sheriff's Department deputy negotiated steep terrain to get to the vehicle and determined that the operator, H.B.M., had died in the accident. H.B.M. had been reported missing from his residence in Fishersville, Virginia, five days earlier. Recovery operations were complicated by the fact that the vehicle came to rest approximately 130 feet below the parkway in difficult terrain. The time and cause of death and cause have not yet been determined. [Kurt Speers, Ridge District Ranger] OTHER NEWS The following stories are among those in today's edition of InsideNPS. To see the full text, including images, NPS employees should go to the InsideNPS home page ( HYPERLINK "http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index" http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index). Non-NPS employees can see most of them on the NPS Digest page ( HYPERLINK "http://home.nps.gov/applications/digest/" http://home.nps.gov/applications/digest/): Canyon de Chelly NM - The Student Conservation Association and Canyon de Chelly National Monument joined together this summer to host an all Native American high school crew for students from the local community. National Capital Region - Perry Wheelock has been named NCR's chief of resource, stewardship and science, a new position which combines both cultural and natural resource protection for 16 national parks in the greater Washington metro area. * * * * The Morning Report is a publication of the Division of Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Services, Washington Office, produced with the support of the Office of the Assistant Director for Information Resources and the Office of the Chief Information Officer. Edited by Bill Halainen ( HYPERLINK "mailto:Bill_Halainen@nps.gov" Bill_Halainen@nps.gov). --- ### --- |