2008 Safety Award Winners Announced

The two highest awards bestowed by the National Park Service for outstanding public and employee safety achievement – the Andrew Clark Hecht Public Safety Achievement Award and the Director’s Safety and Health Achievement Award – have been presented to Mount Rainier and Glacier Bay National Parks.

This year, the Division of Risk Management was pleased to receive outstanding nominations from six regional winners competing for the public safety award and five regional winners competing for the employee safety award.  Two separate review committees comprised of field, regional and headquarter NPS staff faced a challenging task to select the best from among such excellent contenders, but each review committee member put careful consideration into the selection process.  

2008 Andrew Clark Hecht Public Safety Achievement Award



Mount Rainier National Park, Pacific West Region – Despite unforgiving conditions and the more than 9,000 climbers who visit Mount Rainier National Park annually, through innovative efforts of the Mount Rainier Climbing Program, other park staff and partners, the park was able to realize impressive decreases in injuries and fatalities over a sustained three year period. Enhanced communication, training, improved concessions management, and improved coordination among park programs has resulted in significant reductions in visitor injuries.  Climbing-related search and rescues (SARs) have decreased from 1.14 per 1,000 climbers in 1998-2005 to 0.49 from 2006-2008. Injuries have also decreased, from 1.03 per 1,000 climbers in 1998-2005 to 0.35 in 2006-2008. Fatalities on the upper mountain have also decreased from 0.18 per 1,000 climbers in 2005-2008, and there were no fatalities in 2006-2008. Overall, 2008 had the least number of total park-wide search and rescue incidents (10) since 1987.

The Risk Management Division also commends the five other regional finalists selected by their regions for outstanding efforts to enhance visitor safety and reduce visitor injury:   

• George Washington Memorial Parkway, National Capital Region – The parkway’s Mount Vernon Trail (MVT), spanning 18 miles through three jurisdictions, is one of the nation’s most heavily-used multi-use trails.  In an effort to prevent accidents and injury on the trail, GWMP established a multi-disciplinary task force comprised of a range of park staff and partners outside the park to evaluate MVT safety issues and to initiate efforts to enhance safety.  The task force and the GWMP have undertaken several project to address safety-related issues on the trail.  For example, they strengthened the incident coordination and sharing of accident statistics between the National Park Service and three Virginia counties that respond to  medical emergencies on the trail, implemented a July 4th trail safety operations program, developed and implemented new traffic calming signs for major events and collaborated with the Virginia Department of Transportation to estimate the trail use to better manage trail use.  GWMP also reached thousands of visitors with safety messages through its successful “Trail Days” program.
• Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska Region – Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve employees, researchers, and cooperators have undertaken efforts to provide critical safety functions for the park from the park’s Visitor Information Station.  The Station serves as the primary public contact facility for park visitors to receive personalized marine and backcountry safety orientations, and serves as the key communications link and communications center for commercial and recreational vessel traffic. Through the dedicated efforts by staff at the Visitor Information Station to include educating visitors on safety issues, providing critical and timely weather and water condition information and ensuring that staff has superior levels of training, the park has not had a single serious visitor injury or accidental fatality in more than nine years.
• Rocky Mountain National Park, Intermountain Region – In reaction to an increasing trend of injuries and fatalities at snow play areas in Rocky Mountain National Park, park staff took the initiative to strictly manage the snow play areas and to better accommodate a growing recreational activity.  Rocky Mountain staff defined new play area boundaries to change the flow of sledding activity to more safely guide and direct the activity.  Staff identified and removed obstacles that contributed to serious injuries and educated visitors about the highest risk dangers through both signage and person to person contact through the use of volunteers.  The outstanding, multifaceted approach of this park resulted in significant reductions in injuries related to snow play in the park.
• Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, Northeast Region – Over the past several years, park managers in the Northeast Region have recognized an increasing need to improve the condition of trees in high use areas.  As trees in these park areas age and their condition deteriorates, the risk of injury to visitors and damage to adjacent park resources increases.  Park staff at Olmsted Center has implemented an Arborist Training Program to provide staff with broad training that will ensure that participants develop specialized hazard awareness and safety skills while effectively maintaining and preserving park resources. The tree care program has been accomplished with only a single minor injury.  

2008 Director’s Safety and Health Achievement Award



Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska Region – In 2004, the staff at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve began to reengineer its existing safety and health program into an Employee-driven Safety Program.  At that point, 12 of the Park’s 15 OSHA recordable employee injuries occurred in the Maintenance Division.  Since 2004, the change in philosophy has led the entire park to realize significant decreases in employee injuries, but in 2008 the Maintenance Division reached its goal of zero injuries.  Some of the Maintenance Division’s many impressive statistics include:  decreased DART rate from 35.719 to 0; Continuation of Pay costs from $124,369.94 to $0; and an OSHA recordable rate of 61.232 to 0.  The Maintenance Division’s success can be tied to the following major elements:  Planning, Leadership, Training, Accident Reporting, and a Focus on the Future.  Congratulations to Glacier Bay.

The Risk Management Division also commends the five other regional finalists selected by their regions for outstanding efforts to improve park safety and health:

• Richmond National Battlefield Park, Northeast Region – Another park that continued to improve upon an impressive safety and health program is Richmond National Battlefield Park, which experienced only one lost time injury in 2008.  In fact, the Park has suffered only one lost time injury in over 300,000 work hours.  A major reason for the Park’s successes this year is due in large part to a reconstituted safety committee with new leadership and membership.  This group performed numerous facility safety inspections identifying and abating serious hazards.  The Park also began a commitment and journey toward approval into the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Voluntary Protection Program or “VPP.”  Organizations that participate in VPP are seeking to implement safety and health programs that transcend basic compliance and seek to operate world-class caliber safety management systems. 
• Steve Hastings, Historic Preservation and Training Center, WASO – As our only individual nominee for this year’s Director’s Safety Award, Steve Hastings’ actions and dedication to the Historic Preservation and Training Center’s safety program was outstanding.  Some of Mr. Hastings 2008 accomplishments include organizing and managing the HPTC’s 2008 DOI Safety Day; continuing to advocate for safety training partnering with Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College to deliver Equipment Operator Safety classes (559 NPS attendees total); efforts that led to180 injury free days at HPTC, an organization is primarily engaged in hazardous construction activities; actively participating in the HPTC Safety Committee; and for keeping safety in the forefront by disseminating vital safety information to HPTC personnel.
• Lake Mead National Park, Pacific West Region – Lake Mead’s Visitor and Resource Protection (VRP) Team has been at the forefront of promoting and implementing an employee-focused, leadership based program, Operation Leadership, which was recently adopted as a Service-wide initiative by the National Leadership Council.  Lake Mead’s VRP Team has already recognized great results in important leading indicators of safety performance including increased employee engagement with safety issues, a higher degree of staff professionalism, better risk decisions by employees, and robust investigation of near miss accidents.  Operational Leadership is sure to have a positive impact on the safety culture at Lake Mead and throughout NPS.
• Virgin Islands National Park, Southeast Region – The Virgin Islands National Park Safety Team, comprised of members from all Park divisions, undertook a pilot program with the Division of Risk Management to implement a Risk Assessment tool that can be used to identify and assign safety risks.  The Safety Team developed safety field data sheets to define the location, the specific area, type of hazard, the exposed population, assigned risk levels to each hazard, and when possible, recommendations for corrective actions. The Team entered and tracked this hazard data in a database and assigned corrective action to the appropriate agency.  This new approach has led to a renewed emphasis on safety and a significant decrease in employee and visitor hazards. 
• George Rogers Clark National Historic Park, Midwest Region – The men and women of George Rogers National Historic Park continued to foster an exceptional safety and health culture in 2008.  For the 10th consecutive year, the Park has not experienced a single lost time injury.  The staff at George Rogers attributes their success to employees who are aware and immediately corrects or reports safety hazards; an engaged supervisory staff that continually provides employee safety briefings; and leaders that lead by example, abiding by safety standards as they’d expect employees to do.  With all levels of the Park staff engaged in safety activities, George Rogers has developed a safety culture worthy of emulation.

The winners of each of these safety awards will receive a $2,000 cash award and a plaque presented by the director to the regional director and the park superintendent.  Details of the award presentations are currently being arranged.