Which of the following is not one of the five steps for handling an environmental incident?

• A. Contain the leak
• B. Secure the cargo
• C. Clean up
• D. Report

Answer: (A)

In incident response, you work through actions that prevent harm, stop the spread, and remove the threat, followed by reporting and review. The sequence is about quickly securing the source, alerting the right people, containing any release, cleaning up the contamination, and then documenting and reviewing what happened.

Contain the leak describes stopping or limiting the release itself, which is a core aim of containment actions. However, in many five-step models, containment is treated as part of the broader effort to secure and isolate the incident rather than as its own separate named step. That framing often lists explicit steps like securing the cargo, reporting the incident, cleaning up the spill, and then documenting or reviewing, with containment conceptually included in the “secure/contain” phase rather than listed separately.

So the other options fit clearly as explicit steps: securing the cargo to prevent movement or exposure, reporting to notify authorities or supervisors, and cleaning up to remove or neutralize the contaminant.