Oil spill response crews prepare for the worst

Crews tasked with cleaning up oil spills in B.C's waters were out on the wateron Wednesdaypreparing strategies on how to respond to oil spills in areas thatneed protection first.

"The idea behind it is that we areidentifying coastal sensitives ahead of a spill," said Michael Lowry with Western Canada Marine Response Corporation.

"Asensitivity could be an environmental sensitivity or could be acultural sensitivity. Today we are focusing on cultural sensitivities atStanleyPark that have been identified by the local First Nations," Lowry said.

After plotting out locations that will need protection first,crews dropped booms and sought out the best places to anchor them be it on a tree, rock or infrastructure they then captured and logged the information.

"Having this information ahead of time allows us to have a quick rapid response," said Jocelyn Gardner, a response readiness supervisor with WCMRC.

"These strategies we are developing arereally useful for that first 72 hours," Gardner said.

WCMRCwas the same companytasked with cleaning up the English Bay oil spill in April 2015 where 2,700 litres of bunker C fuel spilled from the cargo ship MV Marathassa.

The response time to that spill was criticized for being too slowwhen it came to notifying the city and clean up crews, andexperts called it "disappointing"and "embarrassing."

Even though, today's procedure wasn't carried out for that spill because it was too small and was heading west out ofEnglish Bay it's supposed tohelp speed up response time if a bigger spill happens in the future.

"It gives you a snapshot ofwhat your sensitives are in the area, whatkind of equipment you need to protect them,how many people you need ... so a lot of your pre-planning is done ina quick two-page format," said Gardner.

This protection strategy is only part of the spill response protocol but happens simultaneously with containment, in which a team will use a boom to wrap the vessel that is polluting, and recovery, wherethe team recovers the oil that has already escaped the vessel.

So far, the organization has produced nearly 400 protection strategies for B.C.'s coasts.