The First Casualty Of A Botched Oil Spill Response Is The Truth

YouWantASaladSpinnerForThatOilSoaked
SeaweedVille


Don't know about you, but when I heard Assistant Coast Guard Commissioner Robert Giroaurd say the following Sunday morning I knew something was up:

..."We thought we had a sophisticated (communications) system in place. Something went awry," he said. "We will fix it."...

Specifically, I figured that the 'communications' issue would be their limited hangout in front of a PR offensive that began with the 'detailed' timeline that showed that the contracted spill response company was on site 'just' four hours and fifteen minutes after the Coast Guard first received the call that oil was in the water (call came in at 5:10pm, contractor arrived at 9:25pm).

Well...

By Sunday afternoon Pravda on the Rideau had cranked its wurlitzer to warp speed.

Suddenly all we heard about was the fantastic spill response...That fewer waterfowl had been affected than first thought...That the contracting company was doing a bang up job...That the company workers were really working it and everything, with pictures from PravOnRid's unofficial official photographer and everything (Charlie Smith has that story)...And that the old Coast Guard base couldn't really have dealt with any of this anyway.

And then there was that business about how there was only a milk jug of oil left in the water, or some such thing, that the screamers and ethicalized lubricists like the good Mr. Levant started howling about.

Now.

All of this codswallop will probably move the center of the proMedia version of the story just far enough over to the 'look-how-everybody-over-reacted' side of the conventional wisdom ledger such that very fine less screamerish proMedia folks like the Keef can rub the citizenry's nose in it even further.

But none of that will change the fact that what did NOT happen was the arrival of a Coast Guard boat with spill response capabilities, within minutes (i.e. not 4 hours), to the scene.

Which, as we learned, Thursday is very likely what WOULD have happened if the Kitsilano Coast Guard station had not been dismantled by the federal government of Stephen Harper (and which the provincial government of Christy Clark barely lifted a finger to stop) in 2013.

” …(F)ormer Kits base commander Fred Moxey...told (CKNW) that a special pollution response boat formerly stationed at the now shuttered Kitsilano Coast Guard base is sitting empty with no crew at Sea Island base in Richmond. According to Moxey, only a rubber boat from the Coast Guard responded to the English Bay oil spill last night. Moxey also told us the Osprey formerly stationed at Kits was dismantled and sold off then when the base was closed. Moxey says if Kits Base was still active today crews would have been on scene at the spill in six minutes with the equipment to deal with the situation...”

****

So, to sum up...

Yes, this was a small spill.

But let's step back a bit and ask the bigger question about the bigger truth.

Would anyone be happy with a 4 hour plus response if this had been a large spill?


______
And, just in case you were wondering...No, the Keef did not answer my question the direct question posed to him on the Twittmachine in response to his veiled attempt at hippie/environmentalist punching.


.