In search and rescue regions there are agreements of host nation support (HNS) between border countries to assist each other. Such organization provides opportunity to obtain additional resources from other countries. However, there are regional and situational peculiarities may challenge mass rescue situations in all stages. Due to the lack of capacities, the problem, which is not easy to solve, there is a need for governmental efforts. At this level it is important to have a complete overview over the range and bases for helicopters and ships and assist with arrangements to provide these resources to the incident sites. The most important demand here would be the capacity to reach out to the distress position and back to a safe place with the rescued people.
The AECO TTX, Sarinor and SAREX Svalbard projects have highlighted that efforts in developing adequate personal and collective rescue equipment are needed. The SOLAS minimum requirements are expecting passengers to survive five days on rescue equipment from ship which is currently impossible. There is a need for developing of management that sees opportunities in the innovation perspectives regarding survival equipment and survivor’s recovery. It is important to establish a network of response actors, industry and regulatory bodies and forums for information sharing.
Rescue coordination centers (RCC) provide information to higher authorities, a governmental organization or ministry. There is a need for more educational activities and exercises between different national organizations, but also between Arctic states. In Sweden there is a need to gather and share experiences among national emergency organizations in general and international in particular. In Sweden, many authorities are going through organizational changes and becoming more and more centralized. This might impact the regional level in a negative way, much due to loss of contact with local actors and too big areas of responsibility. Therefore, there is a need for frequent regional exercises, testing the effectiveness of the regional strategic level management. Moreover, there is need for a better multi-sectoral and multi-national collaboration approach. Resulting in more key actors knowing about each other and sharing more resources and tasks.
There is a need to develop more national educational activities, involving all relevant key actors and focusing on the arctic context and to set up new rules for the communication procedures. In
100 the arctic region it is even more important to give as much of the information as possible,
regardless of missing information. This may speed up the time for the emergency response once more information is provided.
Unlike Norway, the management model in Sweden, with many different actors involved and responsible for specific areas, might reduce the effectiveness of an oil spill response. The Violent action training and exercises are expensive, and more joint training should be emphasized.
In Russia, the main maritime SAR strategy is based on surface vessels. However, long distances in the Arctic and hard weather conditions demand quicker response that only aircrafts can provide in some circumstances. According to experts, it is necessary to develop the system which involves air support in case of any evacuation in the Arctic. All the attempts by vessel crew of showing improving initiative that are coming from the bottom of the hierarchy to the vessel owners and heads of regional and federal ministries and departments fail. Their proposals to enhance and improve the existing security systems are mostly ignored or realized within a very long period of time due to bureaucratic procedures of consideration and coordination.
Large-scale accidents will correspond to the federal level according to the Russian legislation.
The coordination and emergency organizations to be involved will include federal resources from Moscow which don’t have experience to cope with emergencies in arctic conditions.
The mass rescue evacuation needs high level skills form paramedics to triage, provide first aid, evacuation and right treatment. Regional SAR exercises don’t provide medical part though it’s very important to render medical aid as soon as possible in case of hypothermia which is highly possible in the cold climate conditions. Usually, the exercises, in particular the Arkhangelsk region tabletop exercises, are conducted at daytime and in good weather conditions. But the specialists note that it’s necessary to equip the involved SAR helicopters with thermal scanner, high-capacity hoist, night viewing camera, searchlight, and video camera in order to improve tactical capacities during the nighttime and bad weather conditions.
The OSR preparedness system in Russia includes only federal and regional services and organizations unlike Norway where each municipality has the Inter-Municipal Committee for acute pollution (IUA) which has a public responsibility within a given time to respond to an acute pollution from usual activities in the municipality, such as oil spills.
101 The issue of commercialization of oil spill response services results from federal policy. Lack of funding may obstruct the ability of response providers to improve their capacity and forces them to seek additional sources of income, leading to competition for resources and clients.
Early notification is essential in order that the strategic level can assess the situation and plan a safe approach. The reluctance to call early for help whatever the reason, be it company policy, salvage claims or just lack of understanding of what is available, may incur serious delays which will affect the success of the operation.
Common characteristic of all preparedness institutions is the complex organization of interaction with similar units and subdivisions of the Ministry of Defense and the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. There is no separate subdivision responsible for providing assistance to civil ships in these agencies. Existing units provide assistance to military and civil ships on the basis of special instructions that often considered an official or professional secret. That’s why specialists and personnel of public or civil institutions often have to address their requests to their chief or head of regional level as minimum when help is needed from the side of the Ministry of Defense and FSS. Such organization/way of interaction is very time consuming and it causes a problem in the provision of assistance to people in distress in the High north sea areas.
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