Sunday, March 19, 2006

Lessons learned and how "oil disaster prevention" best should be done...have we learned?

Lessons learned and how "oil disaster prevention" best should be done...have we learned?
Do we ever learn? We have seen many oil spills, oil disasters etc. Have we or the authorities and companies supplying equipment really come to the same level of understanding how these disaster should be managed? As I see it there is still a long way to go ... why?
Isn´t the cause and goal the same ... a clean environment? Survival of the living nature and in the end our own survival?

First and most important: This is not an annual Finnish National budget issue! The mainframe for the Environmental Action Center just has to be done with whatever money the government has and thats it. Please, it cannot wait!
WAKE UP: Just pay what it costs, or pay much much more for not being prepared at all, get chought with your pants down, since that disaster will come and that cannot then be any budget issue, right? Logic?

Second: The Gulf of Finland is in one way large and in one way narrow, and it is also near the Finnish coast very shallow, with many thousend small islands. We can have large ships with lots of equipment thats ok, but we also have to have lots of smaller ships and boats to spread the booms and do collecting of the oil in various places. These smaller boats are fast and flexible and are much more useful in narrow and shallow waters. We have to have lots of floating pumps and collectors to do the collecting of the oil. And then we also have to have somekind of larger boats/barges with tanks where the collected oil can be stored, so that we dont loose precious time on emptying tanks ashore.

Last: There is no more time. This has to be done now. In my world there cannot be anything like "national budgets", approvals of "economically faesibility studies" or "other rubbish authority tikitalk" and "time consuming mishmash" to delay this project any more. It has to be done now in the year 2006!

If there is a secret list of "oil leaking boat bay dumping areas" that might be so but what is the idea of such a list of places if we dont have any equipment at all to even close the bay or clean up that bay? And that list has to be public, even if it means whatever it means! Logic?

Comment: In the Prestige disaster in 2002 the only correct decision would have been to take the ship into one of the bays on the Atlantic coast of either Portugal or Spain. But, but...what then? They did not have any sea booms to seal it off, neither did they have any equipment to remove the oil, suction devices or brusches or other... so the whole problem was that at that time nobody was prepared for anything...

Have we learned anything? When will we be prepared? Why make any plans if there is no equipment involved in the plan and no equipment stored at the right places, equipment in large enough amounts and responsible and skillfull people who knows what to do and how to use this equipment? The decisions maybe difficult and there is usually not much time to make them!

Should we do something?

No comments: