SEA EMPRESS
The SEA EMPRESS ran aground in the entrance to Milford Haven on the evening of the 15 February 1996. The Duty Officer of the Civil Protection Planning Unit of Dyfed County Council, who was also the County Oil Pollution Officer responded to the call from HM Coastguard and made his way to the offices of the Milford Haven Port Authority, which was the designated Oil Spill Coordinating Centre (OSCC) under the Local Oil Spill Contingency Plan. At 0230 hrs on 16 February 1996, a JRC was requested and agreed by MPCU. This was set up immediately and the first briefing session of the JRC Groups was held at 0700 hrs. As the ship had come to grief within the jurisdiction of the Milford Haven Port Authority, the coordination of the initial response and the Chairmanship of the Management Team fell to them.
The Marine Team is not officially part of the JRC organisation and are usually located in the nearest Coastguard Centre. Conveniently at Milford Haven, this was adjacent to the Port Authority offices where the JRC was based.
Under the Oil Spill Plan for the Port of Milford Haven, the oil company receiving the ship provides the first level of support to the incident. In this case, the incident escalated to involve not only the Port Plan, but also both the Dyfed and National Oil Spill Contingency Plans.
Texaco established its initial incident response centre within half an hour of the SEA EMPRESS grounding. Initial beach cleaning operations around the Pembroke / Angle peninsular were managed by Texaco on behalf of the JRC. As the main cleanup organisation was established, these operations were fully integrated within the JRC.
The whole issue was further complicated by the fact the Local Authorities in Wales were only 6 weeks away from a complete restructuring. Many people who were vital to the response had other priorities clamouring for their attention.
Indeed, many of the key personnel who responded to the incident retired on the 31 March and this required a carefully organised handover to the newly formed Unitary Authority, Pembrokeshire County Council. Also, the Waste Regulation Authorities, NRA (National Rivers Authority) and H.M.I.P. (Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution) were in the process of reorganising. The new Environment Agency had Waste Management Managers appointed, but their staff were still with the District Councils.
All incidents of this size and complexity offer good opportunities to test arrangements and discover their strengths and weaknesses; SEA EMPRESS was no exception. The first few weeks were extremely stressful with long hours and a myriad demands. It was heartening to discover that the pre-planning was successfully in many areas. The setting up and operation of the JRC worked well. It proved invaluable that individuals thrown together into such a major incident knew each other from previous Dyfed Oil Pollution Advisory Group (DOPAG) meetings and exercises. The Beach Data and Cleanup Guidelines, which gives information on every accessible beach on our coastline and were produced by DOPAG, proved invaluable. The maps from this document were reproduced with a Site Survey Report form and this proved useful. The maps were also photocopied and used to make environmental reports on the condition of beaches.
It is very important that a team dealing with an oil spill moves from emergency status to project mode fairly quickly. In the case of SEA EMPRESS, there was an unusually long delay because of the difficulties associated with Local Government Reorganisation. Procurement was handled by the Technical Team and constituent organisations, as there was no separate Finance and Procurement Team. The lack of a distinct Finance function meant that financial records early in the incident were inadequate, and this led to difficulties later when attempting to compile information for claim purposes.
In order to facilitate continuity, it was decided to set up a Coordination Group to deal with the day to day cleanup operations while the Management Team dealt with the more strategic issues.
Proper communication links are vital in an incident of this size, and this caused problems initially as we started without a switchboard, with 10 lines taking calls in at random. Maintaining contact with the teams working on numerous beaches is also vital, and this problem was solved with the aid of the local Radio Amateur Emergency Network (RAYNET), who provided 43 licensed Radio Amateurs covering 16 locations and amounting to over 3,000 hours.
