The Observer, May 2008
OSPR volunteer brings weath of experience
By EMILY POLLEY
Project Manager
When recruiting volunteers, one thing the citizens’ council looks for is experience. Bob Flint, the newest member of the Oil Spill Prevention and Response Committee has it in spades.
Flint was born and raised an Army brat, graduated from California State University in Chico, and joined the Vista Program. Vista, which evolved into the modern AmeriCorps, sent him to Alaska in 1971 for two years. After Vista, Flint needed a job. He went to a recruiting office in Anchorage and landed a temporary post with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Little did Flint know his next 33 years would be spent there.
During Flint’s decades at DEC, as the department is known, he spent some time in every one of their various areas. He tackled an array of tasks from grunt work to management, even serving as Incident Commander for the Exxon Valdez spill for a time.
Flint remembers when the citizens’ council was formed. “I used to tease Joe Banta (a long-time council project manager), ‘RCAC is the biggest pain in the butt! Thank God you’re here.’”
Flint explained that the council’s charter allows it to do more and ask for more than DEC can as a state agency. Flint feels that including a variety of member communities and organizations makes the council a well rounded organization, and this ability to give everyone a voice is what made him feel that serving on one of its committees would be a worthwhile use of his time.
Besides volunteering with the council, Flint is an independent emergency management consultant, working mostly with the O’Brien Group and Alaska Steamship Response. Flint has assisted in major cleanups such as the Selendang Ayu spill in 2004 and the Cosco Busan spill this past November. When he was in California working that spill with the O’Brien Group, he worked as a division leader and a branch director, eventually supervising more than 350 cleanup personnel. The O’Brien Group serves in a supervisory capacity during a cleanup. Many companies involved in a cleanup effort provide equipment, but lack experience directing crews. Early on in a cleanup effort contracted companies need a jump start, and the O’Brien Group works with them to provide direction and oversight.
The vast majority of Flint’s jobs are training and drill-related, thus he spends most of his time keeping up with oil-spill response technology. The work offers great opportunities, but Flint also enjoys being able to turn down jobs. Recently he was asked to go to Turkey, but decided the region was a bit too tumultuous for him.
Flint enjoys spending time working with the Oil Spill Prevention and Response Committee, or OSPR. His wide experience with the state side of spill response gives a new perspective to the committee. Because of his hands on experience and understanding of personnel, regulations, and spill response, the committee will be sending Flint to the International Oil Spill Conference in Savannah, Ga. this month.
He also serves on the Prevention, Response, Operations and Safety Committee of the Cook Inlet Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council. There, he works on a number of the same issues that OSPR faces, only in a different body of water.
Not all Flint’s time is spent in oil-spill work, however. Flint and his wife Fran have very active lives. What else would you expect from a couple that met in scuba diving class? “I’ve never met anyone who looked that good in flippers,” recalls Flint.
Fran is an avid gardener, while Flint enjoys woodturning. Every September Flint and his brother volunteer for a month with the U.S Forest Service in Montana’s Bob Marshall and Great Bear wilderness areas. Using horses and pack mules, the Flints work on odds and ends of jobs that have fallen to the bottom of the list for paid employees, including packing supplies into isolated areas. The paid employees work on bigger projects while the Flints work on the littler projects.
“Someone gives me a horse and lets me play in the woods for a month,” Flint said. “That’s the kind of thing some people pay for.”