National Strike Force The National Strike Force (NSF) was created in 1973 as a Coast Guard special force under the National Contingency Plan. The NSF provides highly trained, experienced personnel and specialized equipment to Coast Guard and other federal agencies to facilitate preparedness and response to oil and hazardous substance pollution incidents in order to protect public health, welfare and the environment. Center of Excellence The National Strike Force (NSF) is composed of four units, the National Strike Force Coordination Center (NSFCC), Atlantic (AST), Gulf (GST), and Pacific (PST) Strike Teams. These units combined providea valuable source of technical and managerial expertise to Federal On-Scene Coordinators (OSC) responding to oil or hazardous materials pollution incidents. The NSF, as a center of excellence for pollution response, stands ready to deploy its equipment, personnell and expertise to support the OSC in achieving the most effective and efficient response possible. OSCs can obtain assistance from throughout the NSF by contacting their servicing Strike Teams. OPA 90 Changed Structure Following the enactment of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the National Strike Force, as it is currently confiugred, came into being. The return of a third Strike Team greatly enhanced the amount of equipment and technical expertise available to deploy to a spill, but the addition of the NSFCC took the NSF to a new level of organizational and support capability. In addition to coordinating the activities of the three teams the NSFCC has increased NSF supprt activities. These activities include development and oversight of a national maintenance contract that is essential to the readiness of prepositioned spill response equipment; the classification of private sector oil spill removal organizations, thedevelopment of a publicly accessible database listing the available world-wide inventory of spill response equipment; a logistics network; beoming a leader in the attainment and use of the Incident Command System (ICS) and response management theory; the implementation of a national level preparedness for response exercise program and the integration of the Coast Guard Public Information Assist Team (PIAT). Pacific Strike Team The 39 men and women assigned to the Pacific Strike Team make up one of three teams which comprise the National Strike Force. Our mission is threefold: 1.To provide highly trained, rapidly deployable personnel and equipment to support Federal On Scene Coordinators (FOSC) in preventing or reducing environmental damage from oil or hazardous material spills. 2.Train FOSCs in spill response. 3.Monitor or direct cleanup effort. We work for both the Coast Guard or the Environmental Protection Agency in an area of responsibility that stretches from the Rocky Mountains to the South Pacific and from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Pacific Strike Team personnel have responded to oil and hazardous material incidents in exotic places like the island nation of Palau in the Pacific as well as the deserts of the Middle East. They have mixed with the cowboys of Wyoming and visited the bleak environment of Amundsen-Scott station at the South Pole as well as the frozen seas off Point Barrow, Alaska.